Mechanochemical control systems regulating animal cell size

Abstract

Cell size regulation arises from physical manifestations of cell proliferation and metabolic pathways. On one hand, coordination between these systems yields a constant cell size over generations to maintain cell size homeostasis. However, active regulation of cell size is crucial to physiology and to establish broad variation of cell sizes within an individual organism, and is accomplished via physical and biochemical pathways modulated by myriad intrinsic and extrinsic cues. In this review, we explore recent data elucidating the mechanobiological regulation of the volume of animal cells and its coordination with metabolic and proliferative pathways.