Dynamic mechanical cell actuation techniques: a comprehensive comparison

Abstract

Mechanical forces of various kinds and magnitudes are crucial to cell and tissue development. At the cell level, mechanotransduction refers to the processes that turn mechanical triggers into a biochemical response. Just like most biological processes, many of these mechanical forces are not static but change dynamically over time. Therefore, to further our fundamental understanding of dynamic mechanotransduction, it is paramount that we have a good toolbox available to specifically trigger and analyze every step of the way from force to phenotype. While many individual studies have described such tools, to our knowledge, a comprehensive overview providing guidance on which tool to use to address specific questions is still lacking. Thus, with this review, we aim to provide an overview and comparison of available dynamic cell stimulation techniques. To this end, we describe the existing experimental techniques, highlighting and comparing their strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, we provide a one-glance overview of the niches of mechanical stimulation occupied by the different approaches. We finish our review with an outlook on some techniques that could potentially be added to the toolbox in the future. This review can be relevant and interesting for a broad audience, from engineers developing the tools, to biologists and medical researchers utilizing the tools to answer their questions, or to raise new ones.