{"doi":"10.1073/pnas.2024942118","title":"Cell contact guidance via sensing anisotropy of network mechanical resistance","abstract":"Significance Cell contact guidance in aligned fibers is, in many ways, a final frontier in directed cell migration. Despite its ubiquitous importance in normal/pathological processes, notably metastasis from solid tumors, and scaffold design for tissue engineering/regenerative medicine, the signal that induces contact guidance in an aligned fiber network has defied elucidation. We report definitive demonstration of a biophysical signal sensed by fibroblasts cultured within aligned fibrils: mechanical resistance anisotropy, the resistance resulting from viscous and elastic properties of fibril network to pseudopod protrusion/retraction and how it differs in different directions (anisotropy). This discovery is of fundamental importance to understanding contact guidance, providing a rationale, currently lacking, for future studies of the intracellular signal transduction/response pathways for physiologically relevant contact guidance.","journal":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences","year":2021,"id":153234,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":70,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9487,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":650070,"name":"Alicja Jagiełło","orcid":"0000-0002-3031-2529","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650071,"name":"Victor K. Lai","orcid":"0000-0001-6468-8594","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650072,"name":"Sandra L. Johnson","orcid":"0000-0002-2603-0422","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650073,"name":"Mark Keating","orcid":"0009-0007-0971-9651","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650074,"name":"Alexander T. Nelson","orcid":"0000-0002-1611-4577","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650075,"name":"Billianne Schultz","orcid":"0000-0002-4532-7248","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650076,"name":"Connie M. Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-5557-6651","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563579,"name":"Alex J. Levine","orcid":"0000-0003-0780-1305","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":500645,"name":"Elliot L. Botvinick","orcid":"0000-0001-9837-805X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650077,"name":"Robert T. Tranquillo","orcid":"0000-0003-4668-6135","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":650765,"name":"Greeshma Thrivikraman","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":61,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:43:39.820288Z","pmid":"34266950","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}