FOCAL POINT Konstantinos Konstantopoulos (left), Joy Yang (center), and colleagues (not pictured) investigated how cells control their movement when crawling through a channel of varying width. When the channel is 50 μm wide, a cell can slide through unhindered (right, top) using a movement style regulated by Rac1. Narrowing the channel to 10 μm (right, center) constrains the cell. When the width is 3 μm (right, bottom), the cell has to compress itself to fit through, and its movement is driven by myosin II. / IMAGES COURTESY OF MARY SPIRO (KONSTANTOPOULOS) AND JOY YANG (YANG)

FOCAL POINT Konstantinos Konstantopoulos (left), Joy Yang (center), and colleagues (not pictured) investigated how cells control their movement when crawling through a channel of varying width. When the channel is 50 μm wide, a cell can slide through unhindered (right, top) using a movement style regulated by Rac1. Narrowing the channel to 10 μm (right, center) constrains the cell. When the width is 3 μm (right, bottom), the cell has to compress itself to fit through, and its movement is driven by myosin II.

IMAGES COURTESY OF MARY SPIRO (KONSTANTOPOULOS) AND JOY YANG (YANG)

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