Related papers: Physical limits to biomechanical sensing
Motivated by recent experiments showing that stiff biopolymer gels exhibit highly unusual negative normal elastic stresses, we develop a computational model for stiff polymer networks subject to large strains. In all cases, we find that…
We study the effects of motor-generated stresses in disordered three dimensional fiber networks using a combination of a mean-field, effective medium theory, scaling analysis and a computational model. We find that motor activity controls…
Neural networks can very effectively perform multidimensional nonlinear classification. However, electronic networks suffer from significant bandwidth limitations due to carrier lifetimes and capacitive coupling. This project investigates…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…
We present results of a two-scale model of disordered cellular materials where we describe the microstructure in an idealized manner using a beam network model and then make a transition to a Cosserat-type continuum model describing the…
The vertex model with homogeneous cell properties is known to exhibit a parameter degeneracy in which the system's dynamics is independent of the target area. Here, we show, for the heterogeneous vertex model where cells differ in size and…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
The rigidity of a network of elastic beams crucially depends on the specific details of its structure. We show both numerically and theoretically that there is a class of isotropic networks which are stiffer than any other isotropic network…
In eukaryotic cells, mitochondria form networks that range from highly fused interconnected structures to fragmented populations of individual organelles that undergo transient interactions. These structures can be described as temporal…
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…
Interfaces in tissues are ubiquitous, both between tissue and environment as well as between populations of different cell types. The propagation of an interface can be driven mechanically. % e.g. by a difference in the respective…
Biological networks exhibit complex, coordinated patterns of activity. Can these patterns be captured precisely in simple models? Here we use measurements of simultaneous activity in 1000+ neurons in the mouse brain to test the validity of…
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…
Our goal is to develop a design framework for multifunctional mechanical metamaterials that can tune their rigidity while optimizing other desired properties. Towards this goal, we first demonstrate that underconstrained central force…
To date, the simulation of organ deformations for applications like therapy planning or image-guided interventions is calculated by solving the elastodynamics equations. While efficient solvers have been proposed for fast simulations,…
Tissue engineering aims to grow artificial tissues \emph{in vitro} to replace those in the body that have been damaged through age, trauma or disease. A recent approach to engineer artificial cartilage involves seeding cells within a…
Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…