School of Integrated Design Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan.
Sci Adv. 2023 Oct 13;9(41):eadf9917. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adf9917.
Mechanical stimuli have been recognized as important for tissue maturation, homeostasis and constructing engineered three-dimensional (3D) tissues. However, we know little about the cellular mechanical response in tissues that could be considerably heterogeneous and spatiotemporally dynamic due to the complex structure of tissues. Here, we report a spatiotemporal single-cell tracking analysis of in vitro 3D tissues under mechanical stretch, to reveal the heterogeneous cellular behavior by using a developed stretch and optical live imaging system. The system could affect the cellular orientation and directly measure the distance of cells in in vitro 3D myoblast tissues (3DMTs) at the single-cell level. Moreover, we observed the spatiotemporal heterogeneous cellular locomotion and shape changes under mechanical stretch in 3DMTs. This single-cell tracking analysis can become a principal method to investigate the heterogeneous cellular response in tissues and provide insights that conventional analyses have not yet offered.
机械刺激已被认为对组织成熟、稳态和构建工程三维（3D）组织很重要。然而，由于组织的复杂结构，我们对细胞在组织中的力学响应知之甚少，这些响应可能具有相当大的异质性和时空动态性。在这里，我们报告了在机械拉伸下体外 3D 组织的时空单细胞跟踪分析，通过使用开发的拉伸和光学活细胞成像系统来揭示细胞行为的异质性。该系统可以影响细胞的方向，并直接测量体外 3D 成肌细胞组织（3DMT）中细胞的距离，达到单细胞水平。此外，我们还观察到在机械拉伸下 3DMT 中时空异质细胞的运动和形状变化。这种单细胞跟踪分析可以成为研究组织中异质细胞反应的主要方法，并提供传统分析尚未提供的见解。
