Carina Dunlop gave a talk today (Thursday 31 January) in the Applied Mathematics Seminar series at the University of Birmingham on “Mechanical models for cellular mechanotransduction“.  Carina talked about the ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments which is fundamental to cellular behaviour, with stiffness found to be a key control parameter. The physical mechanisms underpinning mechanosensing are, however, not well understood. In her talk, she considered the key physical cellular behaviours of active contractility of the internal cytoskeleton and cell growth, coupling these into mechanical models. These models suggest new distinct mechanisms of mechanotransduction in cells and tissues.  A link to the Applied Mathematics Seminar series at Birmingham is here.