Related papers: Fiber networks amplify active stress
The complexity of the cells can be described and understood by a number of networks such as protein-protein interaction, cytoskeletal, organelle, signalling, gene transcription and metabolic networks. All these networks are highly dynamic…
Cells sense the geometry and stiffness of their adhesive environment by active contractility. For strong adhesion to flat substrates, two-dimensional contractile network models can be used to understand how force is distributed throughout…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…
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…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in physiological systems. One important function of these networks is to provide mechanical stability for cells and tissues. At physiological levels of connectivity, such networks would be…
Stress propagation in nonlinear media is crucial in cell biology, where molecular motors exert anisotropic force dipoles on the fibrous cytoskeleton. While the force dipoles can be either contractile or expansile, a medium made of fibers…
Fibrous networks are ideal functional materials since they provide mechanical rigidity at low weight. Such structures are omnipresent in natural biomaterials from cells to tissues, as well as in man-made materials from polymeric composites…
Biopolymer networks are common in biological systems from the cytoskeleton of individual cells to collagen in the extracellular matrix. The mechanics of these systems under applied strain can be explained in some cases by a phase transition…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Two-dimensional shape-morphing networks are common in biological systems and have garnered attention due to their nontrivial physical properties that emanate from their cellular nature. Here, we present the fabrication and characterization…
Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
Biopolymer networks from the intracellular to tissue scale display high rigidity and tensile stress while having coordinations well below the normal threshold for mechanical rigidity. The elastic filaments in these networks are often…
Recent studies in mammalian hearts show that left ventricular wall thickening is an important mechanism for systolic ejection and that during contraction the cardiac muscle develops significant stresses in the muscular cross-fiber…
The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…
Random fiber networks form the structural foundation of numerous biological tissues and engineered materials. From a mechanics perspective, understanding the structure-function relationships of random fiber networks is particularly…
In stiff fiber-reinforced material, the high shear stress concentration occurs in the narrow region between fibers. With the addition of a small geometric change in cross-section, such as a thin fiber or a overhanging part of fiber, the…
The cellular cytoskeleton is an active material, driven out of equilibrium by molecular motor proteins. It is not understood how the collective behaviors of cytoskeletal networks emerge from the properties of the network's constituent motor…
Living matter moves, deforms, and organizes itself. In cells this is made possible by networks of polymer filaments and crosslinking molecules that connect filaments to each other and that act as motors to do mechanical work on the network.…
Contractile forces exerted on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) lead to the alignment and stretching of constituent fibers within the vicinity of cells. As a consequence, the matrix reorganizes to form thick bundles of aligned…