Soichiro Yamada
University of California-Davis, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Cells in tissues are constantly pushed, pulled and stretched, yet how they detect those forces and convert them into biochemical responses is only partly understood. In the sheets of cells that line skin, gut and glands, much of the mechanical load is carried by keratins — rope-like fibers, called intermediate filaments, that run through the cell and tie it to its neighbors and to the surrounding matrix.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Biology
Biophysics
- Topics
mechanotransduction
keratin
intermediate filaments
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Identify the proteins that gather around keratin intermediate filaments in epithelial cells with and without applied force, by using promiscuous biotin labeling to chemically tag nearby proteins while cells are being mechanically stimulated.
- Verify that newly identified candidates localize to keratin fibers in a force-dependent way, using live-cell imaging of stretched epithelial cells and reconstituted in vitro assays with purified components.
- Test whether keratin-recruited proteins, including cten — a protein reported as both a tumor suppressor and promoter — act in transcriptional regulation and in maintaining cell and tissue integrity.
- Determine how keratin-mediated force sensing shapes collective cell migration, by perturbing the force-dependent keratin-binding proteins in migrating epithelial sheets.
More about the research
Keratins keep these tissues intact and have recently been implicated in how groups of cells migrate together, but compared with the better-studied actin cytoskeleton, almost nothing is known about how keratin fibers sense force. Understanding this matters for cancer, since migration out of a tissue is a step in metastasis.
Why it matters
Every tissue experiences mechanical force, and faulty force sensing is linked to tissue fragility and to cancer cells leaving their original site. By identifying the proteins that bind keratin fibers only when those fibers bear load, this work could reveal how epithelial sheets hold together, how cells move as groups, and which molecules might be targeted to limit the escape of tumor cells from a primary tumor.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alison Patteson
Syracuse University, NY·Biophysics·Early-career
Determine how vimentin intermediate filaments control the shape and deformability of the nucleus as cells squeeze through confined 3D spaces.
Alexa Mattheyses
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Biophysics
Define what drives changes in the architecture of desmoplakin, the plaque protein that links desmosomes to the keratin intermediate filament cytoskeleton, and test whether that architecture is what confers mechanical integrity, using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy.
Gregory Alushin
Rockefeller University, NY·Biophysics
Determine the structural mechanisms and cellular functions of catch bonds, protein contacts that strengthen under pulling force, in cytoskeletal crosslinking proteins and cell adhesion proteins implicated in force sensing.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.