Related papers: Heterogeneous Force Chains in Cellularized Biopoly…
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…
The mechanics of disordered fibrous networks such as those that make up the extracellular matrix are strongly dependent on the local connectivity or coordination number. For biopolymer networks this coordination number is typically between…
Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…
A new class of micromechanically motivated chain network models for soft biological tissues is presented. On the microlevel, it is based on the statistics of long chain molecules. A wormlike chain model is applied to capture the behavior of…
We provide a unified theory for the high force elasticity of biopolymers solely in terms of the persistence length, $\xi_p$, and the monomer spacing, $a$. When the force $f>\fh \sim k_BT\xi_p/a^2$ the biopolymers behave as Freely Jointed…
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,…
Time-resolved single-molecule biophysical experiments yield data that contain a wealth of dynamic information, in addition to the equilibrium distributions derived from histograms of the time series. In typical force spectroscopic setups…
Collagen is the main structural and load-bearing element of various connective tissues, where it forms the extracellular matrix that supports cells. It has long been known that collagenous tissues exhibit a highly nonlinear stress-strain…
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…
By means of contact dynamic simulations, we investigate the contact network topology and force chains in two-dimensional packings of elongated particles modeled by rounded-cap rectangles. The morphology of large packings of elongated…
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…
Biological cells embedded in fibrous matrices have been observed to form inter-cellular bands of dense and aligned fibers, through which they mechanically interact over long distances. Such matrix-mediated cellular interactions have been…
The principles underlying protein folding remains one of Nature's puzzles with important practical consequences for Life. An approach that has gathered momentum since the late 1990's, looks at protein hetero-polymers and their folding…
Confluent cell monolayers and epithelia tissues show remarkable patterns and correlations in structural arrangements and actively-driven collective flows. We simulate these properties using multiphase field models. The models are based on…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…
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…
Cellular form and function emerge from complex mechanochemical systems within the cytoplasm. No systematic strategy currently exists to infer large-scale physical properties of a cell from its many molecular components. This is a…
Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…