The focus of work on mechanotransduction in cartilage has changed markedly over the last 10 years. At the beginning of the decade, the interest lay in determining the net response of cartilage plugs, almost always as 35S-sulphate or 3H-proline incorporation, to a variety of external loads, with the focus on whether changes in frequency in particular would stimulate or inhibit proteoglycan and protein synthesis [9,21]. Over the past few years the emphasis has shifted; it is now based mainly at the level of the cell as illustrated in Fig. 1. Here we will present a brief overview of the work presented at this symposium in light of these changes in approach.