Related papers: Salt-dependent rheology and surface tension of pro…
Contraction assay based on surface measurement have been widely used to evaluate cell contractility in 3D models. This method is straightforward and requires no specific equipment, but it does not provide quantitative data about contraction…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is emerging as a crucial phenomenon in several fundamental cell processes. A range of eukaryotic systems exhibit liquid condensates. However, their function in bacteria, which in general lack membrane-bound…
We investigate the dynamics of alginate gels, an important class of biopolymer-based viscoelastic materials, by combining mechanical tests and non-conventional, time-resolved light scattering methods. Two relaxation modes are observed upon…
Thermosensitive microgels are widely studied hybrid systems combining properties of polymers and colloidal particles in a unique way. Due to their complex morphology their interactions and packing, and consequentially the viscoelastcity of…
We introduce a model gel system in which colloidal forces, structure, and rheology are measured by balancing the requirements of rheological and microscopy techniques with those of optical tweezers. Sterically stabilized poly(methyl…
Salt is a very common molecule in aqueous environments but the question of whether the interactions of monovalent ions Na^+ and Cl^- ,with the neutral heads of phospholipids are impactful enough to change the membrane rigidity is still a…
Understanding the correlation between structure and rheology in colloidal suspensions is important as these suspensions are crucial in industrial applications. Moreover, colloids exhibit a wide range of structures under confinement that…
An adhesively stressed thin film of a soft hydrogel confined between two rigid flat substrates auto-roughens with its dominant wavelength exhibiting pronounced dependence on the film thickness (H). A linear stability analysis confirmed that…
This project aims to study the sedimentation of a surfactant-laden drop in a liquid with particles. A 2D simulation is performed with MATLAB. The interface is captured by the front-tracking method. The local viscosity depends on the local…
Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) involving intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs) is a major physical mechanism for biological membraneless compartmentalization. The multifaceted electrostatic effects in these biomolecular…
We study the interplay of activity, order and flow through a set of coarse-grained equations governing the hydrodynamic velocity, concentration and stress fields in a suspension of active, energy-dissipating particles. We make several…
The folding of the cholesterol trapping apolipoprotein A1 in aqueous solution at increasing ionic strength is studied using atomically detailed molecular dynamics simulations. We calculate various structural properties to characterize the…
The behavior of cross-linking polymer solutions as they transition from liquid-like to solid-like material in flow determines success or failure in several applications. Dilute polymer solutions flow easily, while concentrated polymers or…
Soft particulate gels include materials we can eat, squeeze, or 3D print. From foods to bio-inks to cement hydrates, these gels are composed of a small amount of particulate matter (proteins, polymers, colloidal particles, or agglomerates…
We report our studies of the linear and nonlinear rheology of aqueous solutions of the surfactant cetyl trimethylammonium tosylate (CTAT) with varying amounts of sodium chloride (NaCl). The CTAT concentration is fixed at 42mM and the salt…
Understanding the origin of the unique rheological properties of wheat gluten, the protein fraction of wheat grain, is crucial in bread-making processes and questions scientists since polymeric glutenins. To better understand the respective…
We numerically investigate the effects of fiber aspect ratio, roughness, flexibility, and flow inertia on the rheology of concentrated suspensions. We perform direct numerical simulations modeling the fibers, suspended in an incompressible…
As a paradigmatic model of active fluids, bacterial suspensions show intriguing rheological responses drastically different from their counterpart colloidal suspensions. Although the flow of bulk bacterial suspensions has been extensively…
Folded protein hydrogels are prime candidates as tuneable biomaterials but it is unclear to what extent their mechanical properties have mesoscopic, as opposed to molecular origins. To address this, we probe hydrogels of the muscle-derived…
We present some aspects of the rheology of field-responsive suspensions, a class of field-responsive liquid matter systems possessing the ability to undergo significant changes in their strength upon application of an external field. Both…