Establishment of microscopic analysis method of stress and strain fields in the biological tissues for unified understanding of mechanical adaptation mechanism from cells to tissues

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Biological tissues change their shape and mechanical properties adaptively in response to their mechanical environment. This response is caused by the cells in the tissue, which actively remodel the surrounding tissues in response to the force applied to them. As the first step to elucidate this mechanism, we have established a method to measure microscopic deformation of the cells during macroscopic tissue deformation and to estimate the force field in the tissue. It was found that 1) even a simple stretch of porcine thoracic aorta caused shear and rotation at a cellular level, i.e., microscopic deformation was completely different from macroscopic deformation ; 2) microscopic stress caused by the stretch was not uniform and could vary by a factor of 2 or more depending on the locations.