Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, 67404 Illkirch, France.
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR7104, 67404 Illkirch, France.
J Cell Sci. 2019 Jul 30;132(14):jcs213496. doi: 10.1242/jcs.213496.
Cells need to sense their mechanical environment during the growth of developing tissues and maintenance of adult tissues. The concept of force-sensing mechanisms that act through cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesions is now well established and accepted. Additionally, it is widely believed that force sensing can be mediated through cilia. Yet, this hypothesis is still debated. By using primary cilia sensing as a paradigm, we describe the physical requirements for cilium-mediated mechanical sensing and discuss the different hypotheses of how this could work. We review the different mechanosensitive channels within the cilium, their potential mode of action and their biological implications. In addition, we describe the biological contexts in which cilia are acting - in particular, the left-right organizer - and discuss the challenges to discriminate between cilium-mediated chemosensitivity and mechanosensitivity. Throughout, we provide perspectives on how quantitative analysis and physics-based arguments might help to better understand the biological mechanisms by which cells use cilia to probe their mechanical environment.
细胞在组织生长和成人组织维持过程中需要感知其机械环境。通过细胞-细胞和细胞-基质黏附作用来感知力的机制的概念现已得到很好的确立和认可。此外，人们普遍认为力感知可以通过纤毛来介导。然而，这一假设仍存在争议。我们将初级纤毛感应作为范例，描述了纤毛介导的机械感应的物理要求，并讨论了其工作方式的不同假设。我们回顾了纤毛内不同的机械敏感通道，它们的潜在作用模式及其生物学意义。此外，我们还描述了纤毛发挥作用的生物学背景——特别是左右组织者，并讨论了区分纤毛介导的化学敏感性和机械敏感性的挑战。整篇文章中，我们提供了一些观点，认为定量分析和基于物理的论点可能有助于更好地理解细胞利用纤毛探测其机械环境的生物学机制。
