Physical pushes and pulls on a cell, not just genes, determine whether it will become part of a bone, a brain—or a deadly tumor
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The human cells in our laboratory looked mild-mannered. They were normal cells, not cancer cells, which are able to proliferate rampantly, invade nearby tissues, and ultimately can kill.
But something disturbingly malignant occurred when we forced these cells to change their shape, stretching them by pulling on their edges. This maneuver, flattening out their rounded mounds, increased the activity of two proteins within the cells, YAP and TAZ. As the proteins peaked, our benign cells began acting cancerous, replicating uncontrollably. It was stunning to see how these changes were triggered not by gene modifications but by a physical force.
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