Probing cellular mechanobiology in three-dimensional culture with collagen-agarose matrices.

It is found that agarose increases the elasticity of 3D collagen ECMs over two orders of magnitude with modest effect on collagen fiber organization, and this results are consistent with a model in which Agarose shifts ECM dissipation of cell-induced stresses from non-affine deformation of individual collagen fibers to bulk-affines of a continuum network.