Imperial College London
Alternate

Dr. Yongyun Hwang

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Aeronautics

Reader in Fluid Mechanics
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 5078y.hwang

 
 
//

Location

 

337City and Guilds BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Hwang:2012:10.4161/cib.21633,
author = {Hwang, Y and Gouget, CLM and Barakat, AI},
doi = {10.4161/cib.21633},
journal = {Communicative and Integrative Biology},
pages = {538--542},
title = {Mechanisms of cytoskeleton-mediated mechanical signal transmission in cells},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cib.21633},
volume = {5},
year = {2012}
}
Download

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Recent experiments have demonstrated very rapid long-distance transmission of mechanical forces within cells. Because the speed of this transmission greatly exceeds that of reaction-diffusion signaling, it has been conjectured that it occurs via the propagation of elastic waves through the actin stress fiber network. To explore the plausibility of this conjecture, we recently developed a model of small amplitude stress fiber deformations in prestressed viscoelastic stress fibers subjected to external forces. The model results demonstrated that rapid mechanical signal transmission is only possible when the external force is applied orthogonal to the stress fiber axis and that the dynamics of this transmission are governed by a balance between the prestress in the stress fiber and the stress fiber's material viscosity. The present study, which is a follow-up on our previous model, uses dimensional analysis to: (1) further evaluate the plausibility of the elastic wave conjecture and (2) obtain insight into mechanical signal transmission dynamics in simple stress fiber networks. We show that the elastic wave scenario is likely not the mechanism of rapid mechanical signal transmission in actin stress fibers due to the highly viscoelastic character of these fibers. Our analysis also demonstrates that the time constant characterizing mechanical stimulus transmission is strongly dependent on the topology of the stress fiber network, implying that network organization plays an important role in determining the dynamics of cellular responsiveness to mechanical stimulation. © 2012 Landes Bioscience.
AU  - Hwang,Y
AU  - Gouget,CLM
AU  - Barakat,AI
DO  - 10.4161/cib.21633
EP  - 542
PY  - 2012///
SN  - 1942-0889
SP  - 538
TI  - Mechanisms of cytoskeleton-mediated mechanical signal transmission in cells
T2  - Communicative and Integrative Biology
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.4161/cib.21633
VL  - 5
ER  -
Download