Related papers: Strain-induced alignment in collagen gels
We propose a class of microstructurally informed models for the linear elastic mechanical behavior of cross-linked polymer networks such as the actin cytoskeleton. Salient features of the models include the possibility to represent…
Through evolution, nature has presented a set of remarkable protein materials, including elastins, silks, keratins and collagens with superior mechanical performances that play crucial roles in mechanobiology. However, going beyond natural…
The mineralized collagen fibril is the main building block of hard tissues and it directly affects the macroscopic mechanics of biological tissues such as bone. The mechanical behavior of the fibril itself is determined by its structure:…
Fibre-reinforced hydrogels are promising materials for biomedical applications due to their strength, toughness, and tunability. However, it remains unclear how to design fibre-reinforced hydrogels for use in specific applications due to…
Keratin are among the most abundant proteins in epithelial cells. Functions of the keratin network in cells are shaped by their dynamical organization. Using a collection of experimentally-driven mathematical models, different hypotheses…
The validity of the affine assumption in model flexible polymer networks is explored. To this end, the displacements of fluorescent tracer beads embedded in polyacrylamide gels are quantified by confocal microscopy under shear deformation,…
Bone is mineralized tissue constituting the skeletal system, supporting and protecting body organs and tissues. At the molecular level, mineralized collagen fibril is the basic building block of bone tissue, and hence, understanding bone…
The elastic network (EN) is a prime model that describes the long-time dynamics of biomolecules. However, the use of harmonic potentials renders this model insufficient for studying large conformational changes of proteins (e.g. stretching…
Collagen fibres play an important role in the mechanical behaviour of many soft tissues. Modelling of such tissues now often incorporates a collagen fibre distribution. However, the availability of accurate structural data has so far lagged…
The unique nonlinear mechanics of the fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) facilitates long-range cell-cell mechanical communications that would be impossible on linear elastic substrates. Past research has described the contribution of two…
The fields of mechanobiology and biomechanics are expanding our understanding of the complex behavior of soft biological tissues across multiple scales. Given the intricate connection between tissue microstructure and its macroscale…
We study computationally the creep and yielding of athermal gels and fibre network materials under a constant imposed shear stress, within a minimal model of interconnected filaments with central forces in $d=2$ spatial dimensions. Each…
Attractive colloidal gels exhibit solid-like behavior at vanishingly small fractions of solids, owing to ramified space-spanning networks that form due to particle-particle interactions. These networks give the gel its rigidity, and as the…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
We introduce a mathematical model for the mechanical behaviour of the eukaryotic cell cytoskeleton. This discrete model involves a regular array of pre-stressed protein filaments that exhibit resistance to enthalpic stretching, joined at…
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells generates forces in conjunction with myosin motor proteins to directly and indirectly drive essential cellular processes. The semiflexible filaments of the cytoskeleton can respond nonlinearly to the…
The actin cytoskeleton is a key component in the machinery of eukaryotic cells, and it selfassembles out of equilibrium into a wide variety of biologically crucial structures. While the molecular mechanisms involved are well characterized,…
Elastomers that can sustain large reversible strain are essential components for stretchable electronics. The stretchability and mechanical robustness of unfilled elastomers can be enhanced by introducing easier-to-break cross-links, e.g.…
Actin filaments, crosslinkers and myosin molecular motors form contractile networks. For instance, the cell cortex is a thin network below the cell membrane ; contraction of the cell cortex allows cells to round up during cell division.…