Highlights
Some research highlights are featured below.
Hussien et al. Advanced Healthcare Materials 2023. The Stiffness-Sensitive Transcriptome of Human Tendon Stromal Cells . Amro Hussien and Nils Goedecke combine forces, literally. Nils developed a versatile (easy to use, easy to tune, easy to biofunctionalize) PDMS cell culture platform. Amro harnesses the platform for careful transcriptomic profiling of human tendon cells, and provides a beautiful bioinformatics analysis of the data. Together the authors highlight how matrix biophysical cues may dictate the transcriptional identity of tendon cells, and how matrix mechano-reciprocity regulates diverse sets of previously underappreciated mechanosensitive processes in tendon fibroblasts.
Passini et al Nature Biomedical Engineering 2021. Shear-stress sensing by PIEZO1 regulates tendon stiffness in rodents and influences jumping performance in humans. Fabian Passini lead this study to reveal the stretch activated calcium channel PIEZO1 is an importnat mechanosensor. We demonstrate that PIEZO1 is triggered by high amounts of tissue stretch (at the lmits of mechanical tissue damage). Activation of the channel leads to enzymatic crosslinking of collagens (thus increasing tissue strength and stiffness). We also link improved athletic performance to PIEZO1, and reveal how certain "gain-of-function" mutations is related to increased jumpin performance.