[FRIAM] more meat vs logic fodder

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The secret forces that squeeze and pull life into shape
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00018-x

The SMMRY:
https://smmry.com/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00018-x#&SM_LENGTH=7
> Researchers have begun to define the mechanisms by which cells sense, respond to and generate forces.
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> The researchers confirmed how this was happening by looking at the proteins that span the gaps between cells, which make contact with each other to stick cells tightly together2.
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> His group measured the forces involved by injecting oil droplets loaded with magnetic nanoparticles into the spaces between cells.
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> A protein called myosin II, a close cousin to the protein that makes muscle cells contract, was known to flow from the middle of each cell to its edge, back and forth, during the zipping-up process.
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> Simple cell proliferation can also signal cells to arrange themselves properly, as researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK, discovered in embryos of the clawed frog Xenopus.
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> In part, that's because of an excess of a fibrous meshwork called extracellular matrix around the cells, and also because the cancer cells themselves are proliferating, he says.
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> Says Fuchs, researchers had assumed that differentiated skin cells, those with fixed identities, couldn't produce mechanical forces.


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