Combining optical manipulation and FRET-based Molecular Tension Microscopy to study mechanotransduction in living cells

My Ph.D. thesis regards the development and combination of advanced experimental approaches and techniques to investigate how mechanical signals are sensed by cells, how they propagate inside the cell, from the external membrane to the cell’s cytoskeleton, and how they eventually translate into changes in biochemical signalling and gene expression. To this end, I designed and implemented an optical setup which combines optical tools to manipulate single cells with microscopy techniques to measure the propagation of mechanical and biochemical signals inside them.