Related papers: Biopolymers: life's mechanical scaffolds
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…
The design of desired behaviors in mechanical metamaterials has produced remarkable advances but has generally neglected two aspects - the inevitable presence of undesired behaviors and the role of dynamics in avoiding such behaviors.…
Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…
Substrate engineering for steering cell growth is a wide and well-established area of research in the field of modern biotechnology. Here we introduce a micromachining technique to pattern an inert, transparent polymer matrix blended with a…
Biological systems, from a cell to the human brain, are inherently complex. A powerful representation of such systems, described by an intricate web of relationships across multiple scales, is provided by complex networks. Recently, several…
Many of the most important processes in cells take place on and across membranes. With the rise of an impressive array of powerful quantitative methods for characterizing these membranes, it is an opportune time to reflect on the structure…
To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
Computational models have become an essential part of exploratory protocols in cell biology, as a complement to in vivo or in vitro experiments. These virtual models have the twofold advantage of enabling access to new types of data and…
Biological and robotic grasp and manipulation are undeniably similar at the level of mechanical task performance. However, their underlying fundamental biological vs. engineering mechanisms are, by definition, dramatically different and can…
In recent years molecular elasticity has emerged as an active area of research: there are experiments that probe mechanical properties of single biomolecules such as DNA and Actin, with a view to understanding the role of elasticity of…
In this work the computer modeling has been used to show that longer ligands allow biological cells (e.g., blood platelets) to withstand stronger flows after their adhesion to solid walls. Mechanistic model of polymer-mediated…
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,…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
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,…
Reduction of information entropy along with ever-increasing complexity are among the key signatures of living matter. Understanding the onset of such behavior in early prebiotic world is essential for solving the problem of origins of life.…
Biological activities are often seen entrained onto the day-night and other celestial mechanical cycles (e.g., seasonal and lunar), but studies on the origin of life have largely not accounted for such periodic external environmental…
Active matter has played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of non-equilibrium systems, leading to a fundamental shift in the study of biophysical phenomena. The foundation of active matter research is built on assumptions…
This paper explores the idea that information is an essential and distinctive feature of living systems. Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to respond to…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…