Related papers: Microrheology and structural quantification of hyp…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
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…
In vitro neuronal culture is an important research platform in cellular and network neuroscience. However, neurons cultured on a homogeneous scaffold form dense, randomly connected networks and display excessively synchronized activity;…
Realistic description of patient-specific mechanical properties of clotting dynamics presents a major challenge. Available patient-specific data falls short of robustly characterizing myriads of complex dynamic interactions that happen…
Detection and monitoring of patients with pulmonary hypertension, defined as mean blood pressure in the main pulmonary artery above 25 mmHg, requires a combination of imaging and hemodynamic measurements. This study demonstrates how to…
Polymerization of fibrin, the primary structural protein of blood clots and thrombi, occurs through binding of knobs 'A' and 'B' in the central nodule of fibrin monomer to complementary holes 'a' and 'b' in the beta- and gamma-nodules,…
Microgels are elastic and deformable particles with a hybrid nature between that of polymers and colloids and unconventional behaviours with respect to hard colloids. We investigated the dynamics of a soft microgel made of interpenetrated…
The structural properties of suspensions and other multiphase systems are vital to overall processability, functionality and acceptance among consumers. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the intrinsic connection between the…
Computational models in cardiac electrophysiology are notorious for long runtimes, restricting the numbers of nodes and mesh elements in the numerical discretisations used for their solution. This makes it particularly challenging to…
Fragility is an empirical property that describes how abruptly a glass-forming material solidifies upon supercooling. The degree of fragility carries important implications for the functionality and processability of a material, as well as…
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…
Microrheology, the study of fluids on micron length-scales, promises to reveal insights into cellular biology, including mechanical biomarkers of disease and the interplay between biomechanics and cellular function. Here a…
Protein fibril accumulation at interfaces is an important step in many physiological processes and neurodegenerative diseases as well as in designing materials. Here we show, using $\beta$-lactoglobulin fibrils as a model, that semiflexible…
Actin is one of the most studied cytoskeleton proteins showing a very rich span of structures. It can self-assemble actively into dynamical structures that govern the mechanical properties of the cell, its motility and its division.…
The mechanical properties of polymer gels based on cytoskeleton proteins (e.g. actin) have been studied extensively due to their significant role in biological cell motility and in maintaining the cell's structural integrity. Microrheology…
Plasma proteins such as fibrinogen induce the aggregation of red blood cells (RBC) into rouleaux, which are responsible for the pronounced shear thinning behavior of blood, control the erythro- cyte sedimentation rate (ESR) a common…
Microfluidic technology has emerged as a powerful tool for studying complex biological processes with enhanced precision and control. A microfluidic chip was designed to emulate human-like microvascular networks with precise control over…
Buckling plays a critical role in the transport and dynamics of elastic microfilaments in Stokesian fluids. However, previous work has only considered filaments with homogeneous structural properties. Filament backbone stiffness can be…
In this work we develop a homogenisation methodology to upscale mathematical descriptions of microcirculatory blood flow from the microscale (where individual vessels are resolved) to the macroscopic (or tissue) scale. Due to the assumed…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in biological systems. Recent theoretical and experimental efforts have shed light on the mechanics of single component networks. Most real biopolymer networks, however, are composites made of…