Shear stress induces noncanonical autophagy in intestinal epithelial monolayers.

Flow of fluids through the gut, such as milk from a neonatal diet, generates a shear stress on the unilaminar epithelium lining the lumen. We report that exposure to physiological levels of fluid shear stress leads to the formation of large vacuoles, containing extracellular contents within polarizing intestinal epithelial cell monolayers. These observations lead to two questions: how can cells lacking primary cilia transduce shear stress, and what molecular pathways support the formation of vacuoles that can exceed 80% of the cell volume? We find that shear forces are sensed by actin-rich microvilli that eventually generate the apical brush border, providing evidence that these structures possess mechanosensing ability.

A mechanically coupled reaction-diffusion model that incorporates intra-tumoural heterogeneity to predict glioma growth.

While gliomas have been extensively modelled with a reaction-diffusion (RD) type equation it is most likely an oversimplification. In this study, three mathematical models of glioma growth are developed and systematically investigated to establish a framework for accurate prediction of changes in tumour volume as well as intra-tumoural heterogeneity. Tumour cell movement was described by coupling movement to tissue stress, leading to a mechanically coupled (MC) RD model.

Predicting in vivo glioma growth with the reaction diffusion equation constrained by quantitative magnetic resonance imaging data.

Reaction-diffusion models have been widely used to model glioma growth. However, it has not been shown how accurately this model can predict future tumor status using model parameters (i.e.

Toward a science of tumor forecasting for clinical oncology.

We propose that the quantitative cancer biology community makes a concerted effort to apply lessons from weather forecasting to develop an analogous methodology for predicting and evaluating tumor growth and treatment response. Currently, the time course of tumor response is not predicted; instead, response is only assessed post hoc by physical examination or imaging methods. This fundamental practice within clinical oncology limits optimization of a treatment regimen for an individual patient, as well as to determine in real time whether the choice was in fact appropriate.

Dictyostelium cells migrate similarly on surfaces of varying chemical composition.

During cell migration, cell-substrate binding is required for pseudopod anchoring to move the cell forward, yet the interactions with the substrate must be sufficiently weak to allow parts of the cell to de-adhere in a controlled manner during typical protrusion/retraction cycles. Mammalian cells actively control cell-substrate binding and respond to extracellular conditions with localized integrin-containing focal adhesions mediating mechanotransduction. We asked whether mechanotransduction also occurs during non-integrin mediated migration by examining the motion of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, which is thought to bind non-specifically to surfaces.