Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 27: Cell Mechanics I

BP 27.6: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 12. März 2026, 11:15–11:30, BAR/0205

Living Cells Respond to the Surface Tension of Soft Solids — •Johannes Rheinlaender, Leah Gumbsch, Hendrik von Eysmondt, and Tilman E. Schäffer — Institute of Applied Physics, University Tübingen, Germany

It is widely known that living cells respond to the stiffness of their environment in terms of spreading area as well as other properties such as the cytoskeletal structure, migration, or gene expression. These effects are usually investigated by seeding cells on elastic substrates with varying bulk stiffness, either hydrogels or soft elastomers. However, cellular behavior differs on hydrogels and elastomers, which has been attributed to various material properties like surface roughness or porosity. Using scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM), we show that elastomers routinely used in mechanobiology studies exhibit a significant surface tension on the order of several tens of mN/m, independent of their bulk stiffness. We thereby demonstrate that living cells mostly respond to the surface tension rather than the bulk stiffness of the substrate on soft elastomers with Young's moduli below approximately 10 kPa and introduce possible solutions to address this problem. To conclude, the influence of surface tension is an important yet underestimated aspect in cellular mechanobiology.

Keywords: mechanosensing; mechanobiology; Young's modulus; scanning ion conductance microscopy; SICM