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 and respond to physical forces.

We usually think of biology as being driven by DNA, proteins, and chemical signals. And that’s true. But cells are also constantly being stretched, compressed, pulled, and pushed.

For Example:

  • Your heart cells feel rhythmic stretching with every beat.

  • Your bone cells feel pressure when you walk.

  • Your lung cells expand and contract every time you breathe.

Those physical forces aren’t just passive background noise. They actively change how cells behave.

How Do Cells “Feel” Force?

This is where it gets really cool.

Cells are anchored to their environment through proteins that connect them to surrounding materials (such as the extracellular matrix). These connections act almost like tiny hands gripping their surroundings.

When the environment is stiff, cells tense up. When it’s soft, they relax. When they’re stretched, internal structures shift.

These forces travel through the cell’s cytoskeleton and can even reach the nucleus. Which means, yes, physical force can influence gene expression. 

In other words, mechanics can change biology at the genetic level.

Why This Changes Everything

Mechanobiology explains things that pure genetics can’t.

For example:

  • Why do stem cells turn into bone cells on stiff surfaces but nerve cells on soft ones?

  • Why does heart tissue need rhythmic stretching to develop properly?

  • Why do tumors often become stiffer as cancer progresses?

It turns out that cells interpret stiffness and tension as information. Just like chemical gradients guide development (see Morphogenetic Engineering in Blog 33), mechanical forces guide it too. Biology isn’t just chemistry. It’s also engineering.

Mechanobiology in Tissue Engineering

This connects directly to last week’s blog.

When scientists design biomaterials for tissue repair, they don’t just think about what chemicals to include. They think about the  stiffness, elasticity, and structure of each of the materials.

If you want to grow bone tissue, you need a rigid scaffold. If you want to grow brain tissue, it has to be soft.

Even tiny differences in material stiffness can completely change what cells become.

So when we talk about engineering tissues, we’re not just programming genes. We’re programming physical environments.

The Bigger Picture

Mechanobiology blurs the line between biology and physics.

It shows that cells aren’t just reacting to molecules. They’re reacting to pressure, shape, and tension. And this changes how we think about development, disease, and regeneration.

Instead of asking:
“What genes are turned on?”

We also ask:
“What forces are being applied?”

Final Thoughts

The more I learn about synthetic biology, the more I realize that life isn’t controlled by one system. It’s not just DNA. It’s not just chemistry. It’s not just structure.

It’s all of it working together.

Mechanobiology should remind you that cells live in a physical world. And if we want to engineer tissues, repair organs, or truly understand development, we have to engineer the forces too.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for this week. I hope this gave you a new perspective on how cells actually interact with their environment. Biology isn’t just microscopic chemistry but also physical architecture in motion. Again, apologies for the long wait. I am hoping for more consistency moving forward.

See you next week.
 — Aidan Kincaid

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