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Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…
We study the mechanical stiffening behavior in two-dimensional (2D) cross-linked networks of semiflexible biopolymer filaments under simple shear. Filamental constituents immersed in a fluid undergo thermally excited bending motions.…
Compression stiffening, or an increase in shear modulus with increasing compressive strain, has been observed in recent rheometry experiments on brain, liver, and fat tissues. Here, we extend the known types of biomaterials exhibiting this…
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…
Nonlinear stiffening is a ubiquitous property of major types of biopolymers that make up the extracellular matrices (ECM) including collagen, fibrin and basement membrane. Within the ECM, many types of cells such as fibroblasts and cancer…
Stretching an elastic material along one axis typically induces contraction along the transverse axes, a phenomenon known as the Poisson effect. From these strains, one can compute the specific volume, which generally either increases or,…
We present theoretical and experimental studies of the elastic response of fibrous networks subjected to uniaxial strain. Uniaxial compression or extension is applied to extracellular networks of fibrin and collagen using a shear rheometer…
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
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…
Soft biological tissues exhibit a remarkable resilience to large mechanical loads, a property which is associated with the strain stiffening capability of the biopolymer networks that structurally support the tissues. Yet, recent studies…
A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
Bundles of polymer filaments are responsible for the rich and unique mechanical behaviors of many biomaterials, including cells and extracellular matrices. In fibrin biopolymers, whose nonlinear elastic properties are crucial for normal…
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…
Disordered networks of semiflexible filaments are common support structures in biology. Familiar examples include fibrous matrices in blood clots, bacterial biofilms, and essential components of cells and tissues of plants, animals, and…
We present a theory for the elasticity of cross-linked stiff polymer networks. Stiff polymers, unlike their flexible counterparts, are highly anisotropic elastic objects. Similar to mechanical beams stiff polymers easily deform in bending,…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
The rheological properties of fibrin networks have been of long-standing interest. As such there is a wealth of studies of their shear and tensile responses, but their compressive behavior remains unexplored. Here, by characterization of…
The folding transition of biopolymers from the coil to compact structures has attracted wide research interest in the past and is well studied in polymer physics. Recent seminal works on DNA in confined devices have shown that these long…
Motivated by recent experiments showing nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin cross-linked with filamin, we present an effective medium theory of flexibly cross-linked stiff polymer networks. We model such…
We construct a homogeneous, nonlinear elastic constitutive law, that models aspects of the mechanical behavior of inhomogeneous fibrin networks. Fibers in such networks buckle when in compression. We model this as a loss of stiffness in…