Kinetic disruption of lipid rafts is a mechanosensor for phospholipase D.

The sensing of physical force, mechanosensation, underlies two of five human senses-touch and hearing. How transduction of force in a membrane occurs remains unclear. We asked if a biological membrane could employ kinetic energy to transduce a signal absent tension.

Endothelial nuclear lamina is not required for glucocorticoid receptor nuclear import but does affect receptor-mediated transcription activation.

The lamina serves to maintain the nuclear structure and stiffness while acting as a scaffold for heterochromatin and many transcriptional proteins. Its role in endothelial mechanotransduction, specifically how nuclear mechanics impact gene regulation under shear stress, is not fully understood. In this study, we successfully silenced lamin A/C in bovine aortic endothelial cells to determine its role in both glucocorticoid receptor (GR) nuclear translocation and glucocorticoid response element (GRE) transcriptional activation in response to dexamethasone and shear stress.

Bayesian image analysis of dexamethasone and shear stress-induced glucocorticoid receptor intracellular movement.

Endothelial cells are continuously exposed to hemodynamic shear stress, which has been shown to induce an array of physiological responses at the cellular and molecular levels. Uniform high shear stress is protective against vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis which preferentially occur at regions of disturbed flow and low shear. The glucocorticoid receptor (GR), a member of the steroid nuclear receptors with anti-inflammatory functions, has been shown to be activated by shear stress.