Mechanical Transduction and the Dark Energy of Biology

Cells have three sources of energy: chemical, electrical, and mechanical. We know a fair amount about the first two, and very little about the third. The study of mechanical transduction is difficult because the stimulus at the site of a transducer (in this case an ion channel) is generally unknown (1,2). The mechanics of cells involves the interaction of many structural components including the cytoskeleton, the lipid bilayer, and the extracellular matrix and intracellular organelles (3). This sharing of stress means that a mechanical stimulus supplied by an experimenter is split between many components, only some of which may affect the channels.

http://ift.tt/2miYZ8n