Force-carrying web pervades living cell
Glanz, J.
Science 276(5313): 678-679
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 9157545 Document Number: 469730
A team of biologists at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston has shown that mammalian cells are densely "hard-wired" with force-carrying connections that stretch all the way from the membrane through the cytoskeleton to the genome. Andrew Maniotis, Donald Ingber, and colleagues demonstrated that tugging on specific receptors at the surface of a living cell stimulates nearly immediate rearrangements in the nucleus. According to Stuart Newman of the New York Medical College in Valhalla, the experiment puts the cytoskeleton in a new light as a mechanism for signal transduction rather than merely as a supporting mechanism.