Appreciating force and shape—the rise of mechanotransduction in cell biology.

Although the shapes of organisms are encoded in their genome, the developmental processes that lead to the final form of vertebrates involve a constant feedback between dynamic mechanical forces, and cell growth and motility. Mechanobiology has emerged as a discipline dedicated to the study of the effects of mechanical forces and geometry on cell growth and motility—for example, during cell-matrix adhesion development—through the signalling process of mechanotransduction.