Microbuckling of Fibrin Provides a Mechanism for Cell Mechanosensing

TL;DR

This paper reveals that microbuckling of fibers in fibrin matrices enables long-range cell mechanosensing, a process not captured by traditional linear elastic models, through a nonlinear finite element simulation.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlinear microstructural finite element model that explains how microbuckling facilitates long-range mechanosensing in fibrous matrices.

Findings

Microbuckling causes loss of compression stiffness in fibers.

Cells induce long-range deformation fields beyond linear predictions.

Localized intercellular bands of tension form due to microbuckling.

Abstract

Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that propagate over a longer range than predicted by linear elasticity. Synthetic, linear elastic hydrogels used in many mechanotransduction studies fail to capture this effect. We develop a nonlinear microstructural finite element model for a fiber network to simulate localized deformations induced by cells. The model captures measured cell- induced matrix displacements from experiments and identifies an important mechanism for long range cell mechanosensing: loss of compression stiffness due to microbuckling of individual fibers. We show evidence that cells sense each other through the formation of localized intercellular bands of tensile deformations caused by this mechanism.