How Cells Perceive Their Environment When Building Tissue

About the episode

The formation of tissues and organs is one of the most important activities of cells in the embryonic phase of our life. To accomplish this super complicated task, the cells must communicate with each other. They use both biochemical and mechanical signals for this. You might see it as smell and touch.

Knowing exactly how it all works not only tells us more about embryo development and what can go wrong, but it’s also valuable knowledge for researchers studying tissue repair and tissue culture in the laboratory. Mechanical inputs, for example the structure of the subsoil and the presence of compressive forces or fluid flows, are of great importance for cell behavior. For example, it tells them when to divide, whether to move, and even what type of cell to become.

How cells respond to mechanical signals has already been studied extensively in lab dishes, but scientists have now managed to study it in a living embryo. They placed a magnetic droplet between the cells of the building and applied a small amount of pressure using a carefully controlled magnetic field. That way they could feel the pushback.

Among other things, what they might do with this is: what the cell is trying to sense in its environment. Individual cells constantly test the structure as a whole. Is it steep? Are the cells close together? And that plays into their next step, which in turn affects the structure as a whole. Researchers are far from done studying this interaction, but the fact that it can be studied at all, in living tissue, is already promising.

Read more: An overview of a cell’s sense of touch.