Biophysics seminar - Giovanni Cappello (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Physique Grenoble)

The mechanical and biological role of extracellular matrix in multicellular aggregates

Biological tissues are composite materials, made of cells, extracellular matrix and interstitial fluid. As cells continuously proliferate, migrate, and secrete new extracellular matrix, biological tissues also build up an intrinsic stress during their growth. This complexity gives the tissues emerging rheological and biological properties, which cannot be merely traced back to those of the constitutive cells. In this work, we characterized the mechanical and biological reaction of a model tissue in response to an external mechanical perturbation. In particular, we used multicellular aggregates as a proxy of avascular and homogeneous tissues, we compressed them via osmotic shocks and modeled the experimental results with an active poroelastic material. We concluded that both the mechanical and the biological response are mainly determined by the presence of the extracellular matrix and by its mechanical state, as well as by the flows of the interstitial fluid.
 

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