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Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
We analyze the nonequilibrium dynamics of single inextensible semiflexible biopolymers as stretching forces are applied at the ends. Based on different (contradicting) heuristic arguments, various scaling laws have been proposed for the…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
We discuss a class of models for particulate gels in which the particle contacts are described by an effective interaction combining a two-body attraction and a three-body angular repulsion. Using molecular dynamics, we show how varying the…
In the emerging field of 3D bioprinting, cell damage due to large deformations is considered a main cause for cell death and loss of functionality inside the printed construct. Those deformations, in turn, strongly depend on the…
We develop a model for gels and entangled solutions of semiflexible biopolymers such as F-actin. Such networks play a crucial structural role in the cytoskeleton of cells. We show that the rheologic properties of these networks can result…
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,…
Optical tracking in vivo experiments reveal that diffusion of particles in biological cells is strongly enhanced in the presence of ATP and the experimental data for animal cells could previously be reproduced within a phenomenological…
Particles added to a fluid interface can be used as a surface stabilizer in the food, oil and cosmetic industries. As an alternative to rigid particles, it is promising to consider highly deformable particles that can adapt their…
Vertex Models, as used to describe cellular tissue, have an energy controlled by deviations of each cell area and perimeter from target values. The constrained nonlinear relation between area and perimeter leads to new mechanical response.…
We develop a model of amoeboid cell motility based on active gel theory. Modeling the motile apparatus of a eukaryotic cell as a confined layer of finite length of poroelastic active gel permeated by a solvent, we first show that, due to…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
In embryogenesis, epithelial cells, acting as individual entities or as coordinated aggregates in a tissue, exhibit strong coupling between chemical signalling and mechanical responses to internally or externally applied stresses.…
This work presents the development, analysis and numerical simulations of a biophysical model for 3D cell deformation and movement, which couples biochemical reactions and biomechanical forces. We propose a mechanobiochemical model which…
As an effective method to deliver external materials into biological cells, microinjection has been widely applied in the biomedical field. However, the cognition of cell mechanical property is still inadequate, which greatly limits the…
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…
We present an extensive experimental study of mode-I, steady, slow crack dynamics in gelatin gels. Taking advantage of the sensitivity of the elastic stiffness to gel composition and history we confirm and extend the model for fracture of…
Water evaporation is critically important for hydrogels in open-air applications, but theoretically modeling is difficult due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and sustained deformation. In this work, we construct a simplified…
The unique nonlinear mechanics of the fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) facilitates long-range cell-cell mechanical communications that would be impossible on linear elastic substrates. Past research has described the contribution of two…