The authors acknowledge that their review could not exclude the possibility that some biological mechanism connecting stress to fertility might be found using other methods or studying different populations.
Paradigms like maternal separation (Tractenberg et al. 2016) or social defeat (Toyoda 2017) are well-established models that have revealed several neurobiological mechanisms that connect stress and the onset of depression.
(b) The blockage of β1 integrin, a component of focal adhesions which connect stress fibers and extracellular matrix, resulted in disoriented cell division directions and a loss of DF.
Recent research also connects stress to sleep disturbances [ 66].
Cell-cell junctions can even connect stress fibres from neighbouring cells.
Subsequent findings have implicated other/additional circuits for connecting stress with alcohol use.
Analysis of adjacent cells where one cell expressed actin-Cherry and the other did not confirmed that discontinuous AJ can connect stress fibres between neighbouring cells, suggesting that AJ complexes anchor stress fibres at endothelial cell-cell borders.
Moreover, discontinuous AJ connect stress fibres from adjacent cells independently of focal adhesions, of which there are very few in confluent endothelial cells, even in TNF-α-stimulated cells.
Moreover, the authors found that discontinuous AJs appeared to connect stress fibers between confluent endothelial cells [ 6], comparable to desmosomes linking intermediate filaments of, for example, adjacent epithelial cells.
Gendered and embodied empowerment emerged for participants through forming supportive relationships with other young women in similar stressful and strenuous life situations, through reflecting and giving voice to central experiences connected to stress and strain, and by starting to scrutinise and question gendered and normative expectations.
