Fig. 2: At 50% strain, the mechanical response of the cell pair to high strain-rate stretch is bimodal: relaxed and tensioned.

a Temporal evolution of the stress in the cell pair following a 50% strain applied at 10%s⁻¹ (N = 30). b The example experimental relaxed and tensioned curves (gray) are fitted with the empirical model (red). c Average stress-time curves obtained in ramp-hold experiments for various levels of strain rate (gray) are fitted with the empirical model (red). To make the comparison easier to visualize, we aligned the initiation of the holding phase to t = 0 s. d B vs C values for all strain rates applied to reach 50% strain are plotted and clustered on a semi logarithmic scale. The results of clustering are represented by solid triangles and hollow circles to represent tensioned and relaxed curves, respectively. e-f, h-i Box plots representing parameters \(A\cdot {\varepsilon }_{0}\) (amplitude of relaxation), \(\alpha\) (power law exponent), \(B\cdot {\varepsilon }_{0}\) (residual stress), and \(C\cdot {\varepsilon }_{0}\) (captures the slope of tensioning) for the cell pairs experiencing various levels of strain rate. g Probability of tensioning for each strain rate, which was calculated by dividing the number of tensioned curves by the number of all curves for each condition.