Bonfim Melo, A.Duszyc, K.Gomez, G.A.Yap, A.S.2025-12-182025-12-182022European Physical Journal E, 2022; 45(1, article no. 9):1-81292-89411292-895Xhttps://hdl.handle.net/11541.2/27141It is increasingly evident that cells in tissues and organs can communicate with one another using mechanical forces. Such mechanical signalling can serve as a basis for the assembly of cellular communities. For this to occur, there must be local instabilities in tissue mechanics that are the source of the signals, and mechanisms for changes in mechanical force to be transmitted and detected within tissues. In this review, we discuss these principles using the example of cell death by apoptosis, when it occurs in epithelia. This elicits the phenomenon of apical extrusion, which can rapidly eliminate apoptotic cells by expelling them from the epithelium. Apoptotic extrusion requires that epithelial cells detect the presence of nearby apoptotic cells, something which can be elicited by the mechanotransduction of tensile instabilities caused by the apoptotic cell. We discuss the central role that adherens junctions can play in the transmission and detection of mechanical signals from apoptotic cells.enCopyright 2022 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)adherens junctionapoptosisepitheliumepithelium cellinterpersonal communicationmechanotransductioncellsmechanical signallingtissuesorgansapical extrusionJournal article10.1140/epje/s10189-022-00163-92-s2.0-85123643970