Abstract

Abstract: Cells sense and respond to biophysical surroundings by coordinating cellular and molecular structures under evolutionary pressure across scales of space and time. How animals and plants leverage the conversion of mechanical forces into biochemical output has been the focus of many developmental fields. However, the same processes seem to be absent in apparent simpler prokaryotic cells. To leverage this gap, our group leverages concepts and approaches from evo-devo-cell biology fields to “mechanically soft” archaeal cells. Here, I will discuss our recent finding around one of the leading hypotheses: together with reading out their chemical environment, archaeal cells evolved to sense physical cues to build different cell shapes and mediate social behavior within the same and across different species. Their accurate mechanosensing brings significant implications for cell cycle regulation, cytoskeleton dynamics, and the emergence of a set of complex molecular factors present in eukaryotes, including animal tissue.