Because many biological tissues are viscoelastic, the risk of damage increases during deformation due to excess mechanical stress caused by increased strain rate. Although there have been many reports on the mechanism of damage generation at the biological tissue level, the detailed mechanisms of the intracellular component damage generation are still unclear. In this study, we developed an experimental cell culture system that enables detailed observation of cytoskeletal damage under stretching. We focused on the actin stress fibers, which plays an important role in the structural supports and mechanical responses of cells, and analyzed local damages of stress fibers in detail during subjected to tensile deformation at various strain rates. We found that the higher the strain rate, the higher the stress fiber damage rate, but damage occurs even at relatively low strain rates, and large strains occur in areas where the adhesion between stress fibers and the substrates were relatively weak.
Nagayama et al. (Wed,) studied this question.