Mechanotransduction, asthma, and airway smooth muscle.

Excessive force generation by airway smooth muscle is the main culprit in excessive airway narrowing during an asthma attack. The maximum force the airway smooth muscle can generate is exquisitely sensitive to muscle length fluctuations during breathing, and is governed by complex mechanotransduction events that can best be studied by a hybrid approach in which the airway wall is modeled in silico so as to set a dynamic muscle load comparable to that experienced in vivo.