Data supporting "Brief mechanical pulses induce sustained intracellular L-lactate production in astrocytes"

Related publication Belko Parkel K, Kuhanec D, Gržina ŽT, Haque Chowdhury H, Zorec R, and Kreft M (2026). **Brief mechanical pulses induce sustained intracellular L-lactate production in astrocytes.** *Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience* 20:1830831. DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2026.1830831 Introduction Mechanical forces are increasingly recognized as biologically relevant signals for cells in the nervous system. In the brain, fluctuations in cerebral perfusion, vascular tone, intracranial pressure, and perivascular fluid movement can impose mechanical strain on astrocytes, particularly on astrocytic processes positioned at the neurovascular interface. Astrocytes are central regulators of local energy homeostasis and can generate L-lactate through glycolytic and glycogenolytic metabolism. However, whether brief mechanical events are sufficient to trigger a cell-autonomous metabolic response in astrocytes has remained unclear. The associated study addressed this question by exposing cultured primary rat cortical astrocytes to brief pressure-driven mechanical stimuli and monitoring intracellular L-lactate using the genetically encoded Laconic FRET nanosensor. The experiments tested whether mechanical stimulation induces intracellular L-lactate accumulation and whether this response is associated with TRPV4-dependent mechanosensitive signaling. The dataset deposited here contains the raw and processed data used to support the figure-level analyses in the publication. Dataset overview This record contains raw and processed data supporting the publication. The dataset includes: - immunocytochemistry microscopy data for TRPV4 labelling in cultured astrocytes;- Laconic FRET recordings of intracellular L-lactate dynamics after mechanical stimulation;- processed summary spreadsheets used for figure generation;- GraphPad Prism files used for figure-level analysis and graph preparation;- an optional analysis notebook for statistical or data-processing workflows, if uploaded with the record. The data are organized by figure.