Both plants and animals sense and respond to mechanical stresses that arise internally or are externally imposed. In many cases, tissues respond by changing their gene expression or their mechanical properties, which has an impact on how they develop. Many tools have been developed to measure mechanical properties and to investigate responses to mechanical stress. Here we review the state of microscope‐coupled tensile testing at the single‐cell and tissue scale and give a view on future opportunities for extending the technology. Uniaxial tensile testing involves quantifying the deformation of a sample when a force is applied. By varying the amount of force, the speed at which the force is applied or the length of time that it is applied for, many characteristics of the mechanical properties of the sample can be calculated. Tensile testing has been used extensively to measure the mechanical properties of whole tissues or organs. The need for higher resolution data resulted in more researchers using indentation tests to measure mechanical properties instead. Indentation tests provide information at a different scale and are not suitable for answering the same type of questions as tensile testing. Here we discuss that by coupling tensile‐testing machinery with microscopes such as is the case for the Automated Confocal Micro‐Extensometer (ACME) it is possible to obtain tissue‐scale measurements of mechanical properties with cellular resolution. Moreover, to understand and identify the biological processes cells and tissues use to respond to mechanical stress, we need to be able to apply mechanical perturbations to plant samples while recording the induced biological changes with microscopy.

中文翻译：

---

结合拉伸测试和显微镜来解决各种问题

植物和动物都会感知内部产生或外部施加的机械应力并对其做出反应。在许多情况下，组织通过改变其基因表达或机械特性来做出反应，这会影响它们的发育方式。已经开发了许多工具来测量机械性能和研究对机械应力的响应。在这里，我们回顾了单细胞和组织规模的显微镜耦合拉伸试验的状态，并展望了未来扩展该技术的机会。单轴拉伸测试涉及在施加力时量化样品的变形。通过改变力的大小、施加力的速度或施加力的时间长度，可以计算出样品机械性能的许多特征。拉伸测试已被广泛用于测量整个组织或器官的机械性能。对更高分辨率数据的需求导致更多的研究人员使用压痕测试来测量机械性能。压痕测试提供不同规模的信息，不适合回答与拉伸测试相同类型的问题。在这里，我们讨论了通过将拉伸试验机与显微镜耦合，例如自动共聚焦微引伸计 (ACME)，可以获得具有细胞分辨率的机械性能的组织尺度测量。此外，为了理解和识别细胞和组织用来响应机械应力的生物过程，