They found that as women age, the cells responsible for maintaining healthy breast tissue stop responding to their immediate surroundings, including mechanical cues that should prompt them to suppress nearby tumors. (newscenter.lbl.gov)
«Knowing how cells respond to mechanical cues in the living embryo and how they physically sculpt tissues and organs in the 3D space will transform the way we think about developmental processes,» said Otger Campàs, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCSB and senior author on the paper that reports this novel technique in Nature Methods. (sciencedaily.com)
Whether building organs or maintaining healthy adult tissues, cells use biochemical and mechanical cues from their environment to make important decisions, such as becoming a neuron, a skin cell or a heart cell. (sciencedaily.com)