A scientific team has discovered how cells decide when to respond to physical forces, a breakthrough with the potential to open new avenues for tackling diseases such as cancer and fibrosis.
The study is led by Pere Roca-Cusachs, a professor at the Department of Biomedicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona and principal investigator of the Cellular and Molecular Mechanobiology group at IBEC.
The results, published in the journal Nature Materials , reveal that the body's cells not only detect forces but also measure how long these forces last before deciding to act. In doing so, the study describes a synchronization mechanism that allows cells to ignore brief mechanical stimuli while responding to sustained changes, a process crucial in disease progression.
Now, researchers believe that the cells use a sort of "low-pass filter" to discard short-term fluctuations, but respond to persistent, long-term changes.
As Pere Roca-Cusachs notes, "imagine you are driving on a motorway and you hear a loud noise next to you. Likely, you will react immediately because it could be dangerous. But if you hear a small, unusual sound from your own engine, you might ignore it unless it persists for some time. Cells face a similar challenge: they have to decide which signals matter and when to respond to them."
