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An adequate control of cell response in tissue engineering applications is of utmost importance to obtain products suitable to clinical practice. This paper is the first part of a series of two connected publications in which we study via…
Soft tissues - such as ligaments and tendons - primarily consist of solid (collagen, predominantly) and liquid phases. Understanding the interaction between such components and how they change under physiological loading sets the basis for…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
Grasping deformable objects with varying stiffness remains a significant challenge in robotics. Estimating the local stiffness of a target object is important for determining an optimal grasp pose that enables stable pickup without damaging…
T-cells are a crucial subset of white blood cells that play a central role in the immune system. When T-cells bind antigens, it leads to cell activation and the induction of an immune response. If T-cells are activated by antigens in vivo…
Mechanical stress plays an intricate role in gene expression in individual cells and sculpting of developing tissues. However, systematic methods of studying how mechanical stress and feedback help to harmonize cellular activities within a…
The hardness of materials plays an important role in material design. There are numerous experimental methods to measure the hardness of materials, but theoretical prediction of hardness is challenging. By investigating the correlation…
The bulk behaviour of granular materials is tied to its mesoscale and particle-scale features: strength properties arise from the buildup of various anisotropic structures at the particle-scale induced by grain connectivity (fabric), force…
Soft grippers are gaining significant attention in the manipulation of elastic objects, where it is required to handle soft and unstructured objects which are vulnerable to deformations. A crucial problem is to estimate the physical…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
Biological cells can exchange messages through soluble molecules or membrane-bound receptors. In particular in the latter case, the interaction is usually located in specific regions of the interacting cells and may depend on or induce…
Mechanosensation is a key part of the sensory repertoire of a vast array of different cells and organisms. The molecular dissection of the origins of mechanosensation is rapidly advancing as a result of both structural and functional…
Ultra-precision machining of metals, the breaking of nanowires under tensile stress and fracture of nanoscale materials are examples of technologically important processes which are both extremely difficult and costly to investigate…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
The interaction of the actin cytoskeleton with cell-substrate adhesions is necessary for cell migration. While the trajectories of motile cells have a stochastic character, investigations of cell motility mechanisms rarely elaborate on the…
Myxococcus xanthus is a model organism for studying bacterial social behaviors due to its ability to form complex multi-cellular structures. Knowledge of M. xanthus surface gliding motility and the mechanisms that coordinate it are…
Cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs) have two mechanosensitive elements: the hair bundle with mechanotrasducer channels and the piezoelectric lateral wall of the cell body. The present report examines how these elements interact with each other…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Physical experiments can characterize the elastic response of granular materials in terms of macroscopic state-variables, namely volume (packing) fraction and stress, while the microstructure is not accessible and thus neglected. Here, by…