Related papers: Designing allostery-inspired response in mechanica…
Disordered elastic networks are a model material system in which it is possible to achieve tunable and trainable functions. This work investigates the modification of local mechanical properties in disordered networks inspired by allosteric…
Mechanical properties of disordered networks can be significantly tailored by modifying a small fraction of their bonds. This procedure has been used to design and build mechanical metamaterials with a variety of responses. A long-range…
Recent theoretical work suggests that systematic pruning of disordered networks consisting of nodes connected by springs can lead to materials that exhibit a host of unusual mechanical properties. In particular, global properties such as…
Allosteric interactions occur when binding at one part of a complex affects the interactions at another part. Allostery offers a high degree of control in multi-species processes, and these interactions play a crucial role in many…
We exploit the intrinsic difference between disordered and crystalline solids to create systems with unusual and exquisitely tuned mechanical properties. To demonstrate the power of this approach, we design materials that are either…
Allostery, the phenomenon by which the perturbation of a molecule at one site alters its behavior at a remote functional site, enables control over biomolecular function. Allosteric modulation is a promising avenue for drug discovery and is…
We explore the range over which the elasticity of disordered spring networks can be manipulated by the removal of selected bonds. By taking into account the local response of a bond, we demonstrate that the effectiveness of pruning can be…
Proteins often regulate their activities via allostery - or action at a distance - in which the binding of a ligand at one binding site influences the affinity for another ligand at a distal site. Although less studied than in proteins,…
Allosteric effects are often underlying the activity of proteins and elucidating generic design aspects and functional principles which are unique to allosteric phenomena represents a major challenge. Here an approach which consists in the…
Understanding conformational change is crucial for programming and controlling the function of many mechanical systems such as allosteric enzymes and tunable metamaterials. Of particular interest is the relationship between the network…
The two approaches to analyzing the large strain behavior of rubbery networks are phenomenologically, using strain energy functions drawn from continuum mechanics, and molecular models, which apply statistical mechanics to compute the…
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.…
Allosteric regulation in proteins is often accompanied by conformational changes that facilitate transmission of mechanical signals between distant ligand binding sites. Typically, these deformations are classified in terms of specific…
Nature provides examples of self-assemble lightweight disordered network structures with remarkable mechanical properties which are desirable for many applications purposes but challenging to reproduce artificially. Previous experimental…
Disordered soft materials, such as fibrous networks in biological contexts exhibit a nonlinear elastic response. We study such nonlinear behavior with a minimal model for networks on lattice geometries with simple Hookian elements with…
This work targets the influence of disorder on the relaxed structure and macroscopic mechanical properties of elastic networks. We construct network classes of different types of disorder (length, topology and stiffness), which are…
Unlike in crystals, it is difficult to trace emergent material properties of amorphous solids to their underlying structure. Nevertheless, one can tune features of a disordered spring network, ranging from bulk elastic constants to specific…
Control of complex processes is a major goal of network analyses. Most approaches to control nonlinearly coupled systems require the network topology and/or network dynamics. Unfortunately, neither the full set of participating nodes nor…
Prestrained elastic networks arise in a number of biological and technological systems ranging from the cytoskeleton of cells to tensegrity structures. To understand the response of such a network as a function of the prestrain, we consider…
Allostery is a fundamental property of proteins that represents the functional coupling between distantly located sites. In different manifestations, this property underlies signal transduction, gene expression, and regulation -- elementary…