Since the emergence of mechanobiology, mechanical signals have been shown to influence almost every process in biology. Cells transduce mechanical signals into biochemical signaling pathways, adjust their behavior and/or phenotype before transmitting these signals to neighboring cells. Mechanical signals thus appear as information, which can be "written" by cells in the surrounding extracellular matrix, "transmitted" through it and "read" by other cells. This brief review summarizes our current understanding of the mechanisms regulating the tensional state of cells and tissues subjected to mechanical perturbations, prior to examining existing or potential experimental approaches to study these mechanisms.
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