Mechanical anisotropy of rat aortic smooth muscle cells decreases with their contraction - (Possible effect of actin filament orientation)

Tensile properties of smooth muscle cells freshly isolated from rat thoracic aortas (FSMCs) in their major and minor axes were measured using a laboratory-made micro tensile tester. The relationship between the tension applied to a cell and its elongation was obtained in untreated cells and those treated with 10(-5) M serotonin to induce contraction. An initial stiffness of untreated FSMCs, normalized by their initial cross-sectional area perpendicular to the stretch direction, was significantly higher in the major axis (14.8 +/- 4.3 kPa, mean SEM, n = 5) than the minor axis (2.8 +/- 1.0 kPa, n = 5). The stiffness increased significantly in response to the contraction, but the increase was much higher in the minor axis (59.0 +/- 9.4 kPa, n = 4) than in the major (88.1 +/- 13.3 kPa, n = 4). The difference between the two directions was insignificant in the contracted state. Observations of the morphology of actin filaments with a confocal laser scanning microscope in untreated FSMCs revealed that they were long fibers running almost parallel to the major axis, while those in contracted cells showed an aggregated structure without a preferential direction. These results may indicate that anisotropy in untreated FSMCs is caused by the anisotropic alignment of their actin filaments, and that such anisotropy disappears in response to actin filament reorganization caused by the contraction.