High stretchability, strength, and toughness of living cells enabled by hyperelastic vimentin intermediate filaments

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1903890116
• Publication Date: 2019-08-13T21:05:55Z
• Authors: Jiliang Hu; Yiwei Li; Yukun Hao; Tianqi Zheng; Satish K. Gupta; German Alberto Pa...; Huayin Wu; Shaoting Lin; Shida Wang; Xuanhe Zhao; Robert D. Goldman; Shengqiang Cai; Ming Guo
• Keywords: Hyperelastic material; Resilience

Significance Intermediate filaments (IFs) remain the least understood with respect to their functions in mammalian cells even though they have been related many devastating human diseases. Here we use optical tweezers perform micromechanical measurements living and IF enriched cytoskeletons devoid of actin microtubules. We identify that cytoskeletal vimentin IFs (VIFs) provide a hyperelastic rubber-like network regulates essential mechanical properties including stretchability, strength, resilience, toughness. show VIFs maintain cell integrity viability under conditions involving extreme deformations. further stretchy VIF can effectively disperse locally induced stress larger regions within individual cells, enabling dissipation energy throughout cell.