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3D shape analysis of nuclei enables in vivo force inference

How can you read out the mechanical forces at work inside living tissue? This paper combines 3D multiscale shape analysis of cell nuclei with in vivo elastic stress sensors to infer those forces directly from imaging data. The experiments and the elegant analysis tool were created by Alejandro Jurado and the Betz group (University of Göttingen); from our side, Jonas Isensee contributed the numerical analysis and ran simulations to generate synthetic test-case data, validating the algorithm against known ground truth.

Congratulations to Alejandro and to our own Jonas, and thanks to the whole Betz team for a wonderful collaboration!

A. Jurado, J. Isensee, A. Hofemeier, L. J. Krüger, R. Wittkowski, R. Golestanian, P. Bittihn, T. Betz, 3D multiscale shape analysis of nuclei and in vivo elastic stress sensors allows force inference, Biophysical Journal 124, 2784 (2025).