On the Intracellullar Memory of Stress Fiber Orientation: Effects of Microtubules and Focal Adhesions on the Repolymerization Process of Stress Fibers

Stress fibers (SFs) play essential roles in various cellular functions such as cell movement, shape maintenance and cell division [1]. One of their key features is that they dynamically change their structures in response to mechanical environment to which they are exposed [2]. For example, cultured endothelial cells exposed to cyclic stretch preferentially reorganize their actin stress fibers to the direction in which the strain magnitude of the fibers become minimum [3].