  Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a
preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called
set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In
contradiction to the prominent role of mechanical homeostasis in various
(patho)physiological processes, its underlying micromechanical mechanisms
acting on the level of individual cells and fibers remain poorly understood,
especially, how these mechanisms on the microscale lead to what we
macroscopically call mechanical homeostasis. Here, we present a novel finite
element based computational framework that is constructed bottom up, that is,
it models key mechanobiological mechanisms such as actin cytoskeleton
contraction and molecular clutch behavior of individual cells interacting with
a reconstructed three-dimensional extracellular fiber matrix. The framework
reproduces many experimental observations regarding mechanical homeostasis on
short time scales (hours), in which the deposition and degradation of
extracellular matrix can largely be neglected. This model can serve as a
systematic tool for future in silico studies of the origin of the numerous
still unexplained experimental observations about mechanical homeostasis.
