Cell signaling and strategies to modulate cell behavior

Abstract Tissue regeneration is driven by biological processes such as cell adhesion, cell signaling, collective migration, cell proliferation, and differentiation. These activities can be regulated by mechanical signals emanating from the microenvironment or generated by the cytoskeleton. Recent progresses in tissue engineering are mainly based on the production of various important cell types such as progenitor cells and in particular induced pluripotent stem cells. Thus stem cells are a promising cell source for tissue engineering and regenerative therapies. Chromatin of pluripotent cells displays a characteristic open chromatin configuration, while differentiation leads to extensive reorganization and formation of large compact chromatin domains. Open chromatin structure is required for maintenance or induction of pluripotency. Pluripotent chromatin is expected to be able to support a large degree of plasticity. In cell programming, chromatin decondensation appears as the initiating early event. New emerging area concerns the impact of rigidity manipulation on nuclear mechanobiology and chromatin plasticity to control stem cell reprogramming. These chromatin properties in stem cells contribute to the maintenance of pluripotency, self-renewal and lineage specification, and key processes in tissue engineering and regenerative therapies. Future prospects include how stem cells possess long-term mechanical memory of the microenvironment. Two topics are developed in this chapter. The first one exposed the role of the mechanical properties of the cellular environment on the regulation of biological processes (cell adhesion, migration, and extrusion) essential for tissue organization. The second discussed how mechanical signal propagated from the cytoplasm to the nucleus and how cell lineage could be regulated via modification of the “epigenome” (e.g., decondensation of the chromatin).