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Method Article
Zheng Liu
The Institute for Advanced Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4252-4617
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Cells can sense and respond to molecular forces ranging from a few pN to tens of pN through mechanosensitive receptors with an astounding diversity of mechanisms. DNA-based molecular tension sensors have been instrumental in studying the importance of mechanical forces in many biological systems. However, the respective shortcomings of these sensors, for instance, the irreversible rupture of tension gauge tether (TGT) under force and relatively limited dynamic range of the hairpin probes, limited our understanding of the molecular details of mechano-chemo-transduction in living cells. Here, we developed a reversible shearing DNA-based tension probe (RSDTP) for probing molecular pN-scale forces between 4-60 pN transmitted by cells. Using RSDTPs to study integrin-mediated mechanotransduction, we could real-time distinguish the differences of force-bearing integrins without perturbing adhesion biology in living cells.
Keywords
Cellular force, DNA-based tension probe, integrins, mechanotransduction
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Associated Publications
An open repository of community-contributed protocols sponsored by Nature Research.
Learn more about Protocol Exchange
Method Article
Zheng Liu
The Institute for Advanced Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Corresponding Author
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4252-4617
Version History
CURRENT STATUS: Posted
Version 1
Posted 01 Jun, 2021
No community comments so far
Metrics
Comments: 0
HTML Views: ...
License:
This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License. Read Full License
Cells can sense and respond to molecular forces ranging from a few pN to tens of pN through mechanosensitive receptors with an astounding diversity of mechanisms. DNA-based molecular tension sensors have been instrumental in studying the importance of mechanical forces in many biological systems. However, the respective shortcomings of these sensors, for instance, the irreversible rupture of tension gauge tether (TGT) under force and relatively limited dynamic range of the hairpin probes, limited our understanding of the molecular details of mechano-chemo-transduction in living cells. Here, we developed a reversible shearing DNA-based tension probe (RSDTP) for probing molecular pN-scale forces between 4-60 pN transmitted by cells. Using RSDTPs to study integrin-mediated mechanotransduction, we could real-time distinguish the differences of force-bearing integrins without perturbing adhesion biology in living cells.
Figure 1
Figure 2
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