www.landesbioscience.com Communicative & Integrative Biology e22278-1

Smooth muscle cells surrounding hollow organs such as the blood vessels, the urinary bladder or the gastrointestinal tract are continuously subjected to mechanical forces. It is known that mechanical stretch can regulate smooth muscle function by stimulating intracellular signaling events, which control smooth muscle cell differentiation and growth.1,2 However, studies of this phenomenon in cultured cells must be interpreted with caution since cellular mechanosensing is highly dependent on the surrounding environment including cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. In vivo, on the other hand, the effects of mechani-cal stretch in the vasculature can be difficult to separate from compensatory mechanisms regulating blood pressure and blood flow in the body. We have in several studies used the murine portal vein in organ culture as a model for examining stretch dependent effects in vascular smooth muscle.3-7 Similar t