… To investigate this relationship further, it is, therefore, essential to develop methods that
allow us to measure cellular forces and to correlate them with the organization and dynamics of …

… This is especially true for animal cells, which have evolved in the controlled environment
provided by multicellular organisms and therefore appear to *ulrich.schwarz@bioquant.uni-…

The measurement of cellular traction forces on soft elastic substrates has become a standard
tool for many labs working on mechanobiology. Here we review the basic principles and …

Mechanical forces play a major role in the regulation of cell adhesion and cytoskeletal
organization. In order to explore the molecular mechanism underlying this regulation, we have …

… In this study, we introduced a new approach for the micromanipulation of cultured cells
enabling us to locally and selectively affect the precursors of focal adhesions at the cell edge. …

… Here we present different experimental and computational advances which together
allow us to achieve a much higher resolution and reliability in traction force microscopy than …

Cells in tissues are mechanically coupled both to the ECM and neighboring cells, but the
coordination and interdependency of forces sustained at cell-ECM and cell–cell adhesions are …

How focal adhesions (FAs) convert retrograde filamentous actin (F-actin) flow into traction
stress on the extracellular matrix to drive cell migration is unknown. Using combined traction …

… We never observed traction near an area deprived of FAs, which allows us to assume that
FAs are the main sites of application of force by the cells and to develop a numerical procedure…

… Quantitative data about growth behavior of cell–matrix contact will allow us to further refine
our model in a more quantitative way, possibly also including modeling of cellular features …