Researchers discover a new type of mechanical waves that come out of cell collision

Researchers from the IBEC group Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics. From left to right, Xavier Trepat (IBEC-UB), Raimon Sunyer and Pilar Rodríguez.
Researchers from the IBEC group Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics. From left to right, Xavier Trepat (IBEC-UB), Raimon Sunyer and Pilar Rodríguez.
Research
(14/09/2017)

Researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the University of Barcelona have published a study in Nature Materials which describes for the first time how mechanical waves are formed after a collision between cell tissues. After this collision, cells push and are deformed creating waves that expand at a speed of three millimeters per day. The spread of mechanical waves is an uncommon behavior that challenges the current perspective of cell dynamics and that could be relevant in the embryonic development or during the metastasis.

Researchers from the IBEC group Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics. From left to right, Xavier Trepat (IBEC-UB), Raimon Sunyer and Pilar Rodríguez.
Researchers from the IBEC group Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics. From left to right, Xavier Trepat (IBEC-UB), Raimon Sunyer and Pilar Rodríguez.
Research
14/09/2017

Researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the University of Barcelona have published a study in Nature Materials which describes for the first time how mechanical waves are formed after a collision between cell tissues. After this collision, cells push and are deformed creating waves that expand at a speed of three millimeters per day. The spread of mechanical waves is an uncommon behavior that challenges the current perspective of cell dynamics and that could be relevant in the embryonic development or during the metastasis.

In this study, the team led by Xavier Trepat, lecturer from the Department of Biomedicine and ICREA research professor at IBEC, showed how cells can keep and transmit these mechanical waves over distances of more than a millimeter -equal to three hundred lined up cells. The study has the participation of the researcher Pere Roca-Cusachs, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and other researchers from the Insitute for Research in Biomedicine (IRBarcelona).

Further information

Reference article:

Pilar Rodríguez-Franco, Agustí Brugués, Ariadna Marín-Llauradó, Vito Conte, Guiomar Solanas, Eduard Batlle, Jeffrey J. Fredberg, Pere Roca-Cusachs, Raimon Sunyer, Xavier Trepat. "Long-lived force patterns and deformation waves at repulsive epithelial boundaries". Nature Materials, September 2017. DOI 10.1038/nmat4972