Blog 37: Mechanobiology
Hey everyone! First and foremost, I wanted to apologize for missing last week’s blog. Flu B has been making its way around the community, and unfortunately, it decided to pay me a visit. But I’m finally feeling better and ready to get back into it. As I started looking for this week’s topic, I wanted something that naturally built off where I left off. After going down what felt like thousands of Google searches, I stumbled onto an interdisciplinary field within synthetic biology that honestly might be one of the coolest connections I’ve seen so far: It’s where biology crosses into physics. When I usually talk about cells, it’s typically about how they respond to signals like hormones, proteins, and DNA instructions. However, today, that’s only a small part of the story. Today and in nature, cells don’t just respond to chemicals. They respond to force. That idea is the foundation of something called mechanobiology. What Is Mechanobiology? Mechanobiology is the study of how cells sense ...