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Through mechanical forces, biological cells remodel the surrounding collagennetwork, generating striking deformation patterns. Tethers-tracts of highdensification and fiber alignment-form between cells, thinner bands emanatefrom cell clusters. While tethers facilitate cell migration and communication,how they form is unclear. Combining modeling, simulation and experiment, weshow that tether formation is a densification phase transition of theextracellular matrix, caused by buckling instability of network fibers undercell-induced compression, featuring unexpected similarities with martensiticmicrostructures. Multiscale averaging yields a two-phase, bistable continuumenergy landscape for fibrous collagen, with a densified/aligned second phase.Simulations predict strain discontinuities between the undensified anddensified phase, which localizes within tethers as experimentally observed. Inour experiments, active particles induce similar localized patterns as cells.This shows how cells exploit an instability to mechanically remodel theextracellular matrix simply by contracting, thereby facilitatingmechanosensing, invasion and metastasis.

Cells exploit a phase transition to mechanically remodel the fibrous extracellular matrix