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Do Cells Sense Stress or Strain? Measurement of Cellular Orientation Can Provide a Clue

Rumi De ^*, Assaf Zemel  and Samuel A. Safran ^*

^* Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; and University of California, Davis, California

Correspondence: Address reprint requests and inquiries to Rumi De, Tel.: 972-8-934-3363; E-mail: rumi.de{at}weizmann.ac.il.

We predict theoretically the steady-state orientation of cells subject to dynamical stresses that vary more quickly than the cell relaxation time. We show that the orientation is a strong function of the Poisson's ratio, , of the matrix when cell activity is governed by the matrix strain; if cell activity is governed by the matrix stress, the orientation depends only weakly on . These results can be used to differentiate systems in which the strain or the stress determine the setpoint for the mechanosensitivity of cells.