Application of soft lithography to mechanobiology

Mechanobiology is indispensable to all living creatures ranging from bacteria to human beings because every living thing continually experiences mechanical stimuli, not only exogenous but also endogenous, and responds appropriately to these stimuli. At the cellular level, there are three major mechanical stresses, such as, stretch, shear stress and pressure (Fig. 1A). We have been intensively investigating systems to apply these mechanical environments to cells. Analysis of these responses is critical to understand the mechanisms and regulation of diverse physiological processes such as arterial and regulation, sensory perception, muscle development, and so on. Therefore, to study mechanobiology, we employed the polydimethysiloxane (PDMS, Fig. 1B) based technology, which is called soft lithography. In this article, I am going to focus on 3 major utilizations such as stretch chambers, microcontact printing, and microchannel.