Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK.
Rosalind Franklin Institute, Harwell Campus, Didcot OX11 0FA, UK.
Cells. 2021 Apr 9;10(4):851. doi: 10.3390/cells10040851.
Mechanobiology seeks to understand how cells integrate their biomechanics into their function and behavior. Unravelling the mechanisms underlying these mechanobiological processes is particularly important for immune cells in the context of the dynamic and complex tissue microenvironment. However, it remains largely unknown how cellular mechanical force generation and mechanical properties are regulated and integrated by immune cells, primarily due to a profound lack of technologies with sufficient sensitivity to quantify immune cell mechanics. In this review, we discuss the biological significance of mechanics for immune cells across length and time scales, and highlight several experimental methodologies for quantifying the mechanics of immune cells. Finally, we discuss the importance of quantifying the appropriate mechanical readout to accelerate insights into the mechanobiology of the immune response.
机械生物学旨在理解细胞如何将其生物力学与其功能和行为相结合。在动态和复杂的组织微环境中，揭示这些机械生物学过程背后的机制对于免疫细胞尤为重要。然而，由于缺乏足够灵敏的技术来定量免疫细胞力学，因此，免疫细胞如何调节和整合细胞力学仍然在很大程度上是未知的。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了力学对于免疫细胞在长度和时间尺度上的生物学意义，并强调了几种用于量化免疫细胞力学的实验方法学。最后，我们讨论了量化适当的力学读数的重要性，以加速对免疫反应的机械生物学的理解。
