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The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
Up-down asymmetric inclusions impose a local, spontaneous curvature to an elastic membrane. When several of them are inserted in a same membrane, they feel effective forces mediated by the membrane, both of elastic and entropic nature.…
Dense granular systems subjected to an imposed shear stress undergo stick-slip dynamics with systematic patterns of dilation-compaction. During each stick phase, as the frictional strength builds up, the granular system dilates to…
Various adhesion mechanisms that have been understood in the field of synthetic adhesives are described and these are linked with situations relevant to fouling issues. The review mainly deals with mechanical aspects of adhesion phenomena,…
Cell adhesion complexes (CACs), which are activated by ligand binding, play key roles in many cellular functions ranging from cell cycle regulation to mediation of cell extracellular matrix adhesion. Inspired by single molecule pulling…
We establish the Statistical Mechanics framework for a bundle of Nf living and uncrosslinked actin filaments in a supercritical solution of free monomers pressing against a mobile wall. The filaments are anchored normally to a fixed planar…
The adhesive and frictional response of an AFM tip connected to a substrate through supramolecular host-guest complexes is investigated by dynamic Monte Carlo simulations. The variation of the pull-off force with the unloading rate recently…
Mechanically induced protein unfolding in the force-clamp apparatus is shown, in a coarse-grained model of ubiquitin, to have lognormal statistics above a treshold force and exponential below it. Correspondingly, the mean unfolding time is…
We study how the commonly neglected coupling of normal and in-plane elastic response affects tribological properties when Hertzian or randomly rough indenters slide past an elastic body. Compressibility-induced coupling is found to…
We study the assembly of colloids in a two phase water-water system that provides an environment that can sustain bacteria, providing a new structure with rich potential to confine and structure living colloids. The water-water system,…
The motion of flexible fibers through structured fluidic environments is ubiquitous in nature and industrial applications. Most often, their dynamics results from the complex interplay between internal elastic stresses, contact forces and…
We study the mechanical contact between a deformable body with a wavy surface and a rigid flat taking into account pressurized fluid trapped in the interface. A finite element model is formulated for a general problem of trapped fluid for…
Internal activity can fundamentally reshape the mechanical behavior of solids, yet its role in softening and failure remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigate spontaneous deformations in activated solids via non-affine…
Interactions between rigid inclusions in continuous three-dimensional linearly elastic solids and low-Reynolds-number viscous fluids have largely been quantified during the past. Prime example systems are given by functionalized elastic…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that dynein motor exhibits catch bonding behaviour, in which the unbinding rate of a single dynein decreases with increasing force, for a certain range of force. Motivated by these experiments, we…
Myosin II plays a pivotal role in muscle contraction by generating force through the cooperative action of multiple motors on actin filaments. In this study, we integrate the nonlinear elasticity of the neck linker in individual myosin II…
Recent high resolution experiments have provided a quantitative description of the statistical properties of interphase chromatin at large scales. These findings have stimulated a search for generic physical interactions that give rise to…
Cell membranes are anchored to the cytoskeleton via immobile inclusions. We investigate the effect of such anchors on the in-plane dynamics of a fluid membrane and mobile inclusions (proteins) embedded in it. The immobile particles lead to…