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Articles in PresS, published online ahead of print October 31, 2001
Am J Physiol Cell Physiol, 10.1152/ajpcell.00271.2001
Submitted on June 15, 2001
Accepted on October 19, 2001
1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
2 Department of Environmental Health, Physiology Program, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
3 Rugjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia (Hrvatska); Department of Environmental Health, Physiology Program, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dimitrij{at}engc.bu.edu.
The tensegrity model hypothesizes that cytoskeleton-based microtubules (MTs) carry compression as they balance a portion of cell contractile stress. To test this hypothesis, traction force microscopy was used to measure traction at the interface of adhering human airway smooth muscle cells and a flexible polyacrylamide gel substrate. The prediction is that if MTs indeed balance a portion of the contractile stress, then, upon their disruption, the portion of the stress balanced by MTs would shift to the substrate, causing thereby an increase in traction. Measurements were done first in maximally activated cells (10 µM histamine) and then after microtubules were disrupted by colchicine (1 µM). It was found that following disruption of MTs the traction increased on average by ~13%. Since in the activated cells colchicine neither induced an increase in intracellular calcium nor an increase in the myosin light chain phosphorylation as shown previously, it was concluded that the observed increase in traction was a result of the load-shift from MTs to the substrate. In addition, the energy stored in the flexible substrate was calculated as the work done by the traction on the deformation of the substrate. This result was then utilized in an energetic analysis. It was assumed that cytoskeleton-based MTs are slender elastic rods that are supported laterally by intermediate filaments, and that MTs buckle as the cell contracts. Using the post-buckling equilibrium theory of Euler struts, it was found that the energy stored during buckling of MTs was quantitatively consistent with the measured increase in the substrate energy following disruption of MTs. This was another piece of evidence in support of the idea that MTs are intracellular compression bearing elements.
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