Figure 2.

A. Schema of a mechanobiological response: a mechanical stimulus drives differential gene expression, leading to different gene products that define the biological response. B. Typical sigmoidal biological response to a mechanical stimulus, as, for example, production of eNOS by endothelial cells in response to increased wall shear stress or production of collagen by smooth muscle cells or fibroblasts in response to increased intramural stress. Importantly, this nonlinear, saturating response can be approximated linearly for changes about the homeostatic set-point, which is often sufficient if the biological response is fast enough to prevent stresses from deviating too much from homeostatic.