The co-evolution of adhesion and F-actin gives rise to hierarchical cellular force generation

Adhesion assembly, on-adhesion F-actin accumulation, and contractile force evolve together over tens of minutes at defined adhesion sites, revealing a hierarchical force-generation program.

• Why it matters: The work addresses how cellular adhesion, actin remodeling, and motor-generated forces are coordinated across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• What they did: Using multiple experimental approaches plus a theoretical framework, the authors tracked time evolution at adhesion sites and applied a multiplicative space-time decomposition to F-actin away from the site.
• The result: F-actin retrograde flow is markedly faster than force generation, does not slow with maturing adhesions, and drops in density at adhesion sites, implying slow adhesion recruitment with rapid, bursty linear polymerization.

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