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Platelets are the tiny cell fragments whose main job is to stop bleeding. Although they don't have cell nucleus, they can "feel" the physical environment around them, according to a new research. 

The research found that platelets respond to surfaces with greater stiffness by increasing their stickiness, the degree to which they "turn on" other platelets and other components of the clotting system. 

"Platelets are smarter than we give them credit for, in that they are able to sense the physical characteristics of their environment and respond in a graduated way," said Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine and in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, in the press release. 

Researchers believe that the study findings could influence the design of medical devices. 

"We found that the initial adhesion and later spreading are separable, because different biochemical pathways are involved in each step," Lam added. "Our data show that mechanosensing can occur and plays important roles even when the cellular structural building blocks are fairly basic, even when the nucleus is absent."

The findings of the study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.