Biomechanical and biochemical analyses of biological tissues in a microscopic level for unified understanding of mechanical adaptation mechanism of biological tissues

生物组织在外力作用下会主动改变自身。为了阐明这一机制，我们需要了解细胞水平上的应力和应变分布，并将其与每个细胞合成的蛋白质进行比较。我们在显微镜下对胸主动脉薄片试样进行拉伸试验，观察细胞和组织在宏观拉伸过程中的微观变形，发现在无载条件下，大波幅弹性层在体内状态下施加的张力较低。我们还进行了RNA微阵列分析，以寻找在胸主动脉腹侧和背侧表达不同的基因，并鉴定了几种与弹性板波浪度有显著相关性的蛋白质。

Biological tissues change themselves actively in response to force applied to them. To elucidate this mechanism, we need to know stress and strain distributions at cellular level and compare it with proteins synthesized by each cell. We performed tensile test for thin-sliced specimens of thoracic aortas under a microscope to observe microscopic deformation of cells and tissues during macroscopic stretch, and found that tension applied in the in vivo state is lower in the elastic lamina with large waviness under no load condition. We also performed RNA microarray analysis to find genes whose expression is different between the ventral and dorsal side of the thoracic aorta, and identified several proteins that have significant correlations with the waviness of the elastic lamina.