Mechanotransduction

You hear a friend calling your name from across a room, you jerk your foot away as someone accidentally pushes a shopping cart over your toes, you are less likely to break a bone if you exercise regularly. What do all of these scenarios have in common? They involve cells, the smallest living unit in your body, perceiving an external stimulus and communicating that information to other cells. How do cells sense and respond to events that happen outside of the body? One major method is called mechanotransduction. Cells are able to convert mechanical stimulation into biochemical signaling that creates changes in cell behavior.

Mechanotransduction happens constantly in our bodies, from the ear where small hairs sense sound waves and translate it into the signals our brain reads as sounds and words, to the skeleton where cells adapt to exercise by increasing bone density. Think of mechanotransduction as a language translation app: the input language is sensory stimulation (sound, touch, pressure), and cells are the algorithm that creates a new language output in the form of ion cascades, cytoskeletal adjustment, and changes in gene expression. Mechanotransduction is a link between the external environment and our bodies, and is crucial for maintaining homoeostasis in our ever changing surroundings.