Mitochondrial positions before (green) or after (red) a micromanipulator (circle) was used to exert upwards tension on a surface-bound bead.

Ingber/NAS

For 20 years the notion that stability of cell shape is based on the rules of an architectural system known as tensegrity has been raising hackles in cell biology. Now tensegrity's foremost proponent, Donald Ingber of Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, reports additional experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis.

Tensegrity (tensional integrity), exemplified by Buckminster Fuller's goedesic dome, is a tension-dependent building system, as opposed to a compression-dependent system. An example of the latter is a conventional house made of brick stacked on brick that gets its stability from gravity. By contrast, a tensegrity structure like Fuller's gets its stability from continuous tension that is transmitted over all of its elements and is balanced by a subset of elements that cannot be compressed. Ingber has...

The Rockefeller University Press
2001
The Rockefeller University Press
2001
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