BEL microtechnology published in "Nature Communications"
Micropillar arrays developed by BEL were used to study rounding forces of epithelial cells that undergo mitosis as recently published in Nature Communications.
Alexander Stettler and Carlos Escobedo developed and fabricated arrays of comparably tall elastic PDMS pillars, between which epithelial cells were seeded that then deformed the pillars upon rounding up for mitosis. The pillar deflection was used to measure the forces exerted by the cells. The corresponding research article entitled "Mitotic cells contract actomyosin cortex and generate pressure to round against or escape epithelial confinement" was published in Nature Communications (2015, 6:8872).
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