Related papers: A microstructurally informed model for the mechani…
The actin cortex is an active biopolymer network underneath the plasma membrane at the periphery of mammalian cells. It is a major regulator of cell shape through the generation of active cortical tension. In addition, the cortex…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
Experiments have been performed using microscopic beads to probe the small scale mechanics of actin solutions. We show that that there are a number of regimes possible as a function of the size of the probing particle. In certain cases we…
Designing anisotropic structured materials by reducing symmetry results in unique behaviors, such as shearing under uniaxial compression or tension. This direction-dependent coupled mechanical phenomenon is crucial for applications such as…
Actin networks, acting as an engine pushing against an external load, are fundamentally important to cell motility. A measure of the effectiveness of an engine is the velocity the engine is able to produce at a given force, the…
Active networks composed of biopolymers and motor proteins provide versatile biomimetic systems that have advanced active matter physics and deepened our understanding of cytoskeletal dynamics and self-organization under diverse stimuli. In…
Composite materials with different microstructural material symmetries are common in engineering applications where grain structure, alloying and particle/fiber packing are optimized via controlled manufacturing. In fact these…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
The aim of this work is to develop a 3D finite elements model to study the nanomechanical behaviour of mineralized collagen microfibrils, which consists of three phases, (i) collagen phase formed by five tropocollagen (TC) molecules linked…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
Manipulating topological disclination networks that arise in a symmetry-breaking phase transfor- mation in widely varied systems including anisotropic materials can potentially lead to the design of novel materials like conductive…
Disordered spring networks are a useful paradigm to examine macroscopic mechanical properties of amorphous materials. Here, we study the elastic behavior of under-constrained spring networks, i.e.\ networks with more degrees of freedom than…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-network-forming protein in animal biology and is important in both natural and artificial tissues, where it serves as a material of great mechanical versatility. This versatility arises from its…
Cytoskeletal active nematics exhibit striking non-equilibrium dynamics that are powered by energy-consuming molecular motors. To gain insight into the structure and mechanics of these materials, we design programmable clusters in which…
From the complex motions of robots to the oxygen binding of hemoglobin, the function of many mechanical systems depends on large, coordinated movements of their components. Such movements arise from a network of physical interactions in the…
Inelastic mechanical responses in solids, such as plasticity, damage and crack initiation, are typically modeled in constitutive ways that display microstructural and loading dependence. Nevertheless, {linear} elasticity at infinitesimal…
Mechanical forces generated by myosin II molecular motors drive diverse cellular processes, most notably shape change, division and locomotion. These forces may be transmitted over long range through the cytoskeletal medium - a disordered,…
Cytoskeletal networks are the main actuators of cellular mechanics, and a foundational example for active matter physics. In cytoskeletal networks, motion is generated on small scales by filaments that push and pull on each other via…
We study the elasticity of cross-linked networks of thermally fluctuating stiff polymers. As compared to their purely mechanical counterparts, it is shown that these thermal networks have a qualitatively different elastic response. By…
The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…