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The collective action of actively contractile units embedded in elastic biopolymer networks plays a crucial role in regulating the network's macroscopic mechanical response. Here, we investigate how the macroscopic boundary stress in model…
The past decade has witnessed the development and success of coarse-grained network models of proteins for predicting many equilibrium properties related to collective modes of motion. Curiously, the results are usually robust towards the…
Statistical mechanics is an important tool for understanding polymer electroelasticity because the elasticity of polymers is primarily due to entropy. However, a common approach for the statistical mechanics of polymer chains, the Gaussian…
Networks effectively capture interactions among components of complex systems, and have thus become a mainstay in many scientific disciplines. Growing evidence, especially from biology, suggest that networks undergo changes over time, and…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-matrix protein in mammals and the main structural and load-bearing element of connective tissues. Collagen networks show remarkable strain-stiffening properties which tune the mechanical functions…
Experiments have shown that elasticity of disordered filamentous networks with compliant crosslinks is very different from networks with rigid crosslinks. Here, we model and analyze filamentous networks as a collection of randomly oriented…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
Active adaptive matter has attracted considerable interest due to its rich, largely unexplained dynamics and its relevance to a wide range of synthetic and biological materials. An important subclass of such systems consists of active…
Recent years have seen tremendous developments in the use of machine learning models to link amino acid sequence, structure and function of folded proteins. These methods are, however, rarely applicable to the wide range of proteins and…
This work aims to propose and design a class of networks of coupled linear and nonlinear oscillators, in which short bursts of exogenous excitation result in sustained endogenous network activity that returns to a quiescent state only after…
Many natural systems are organized as networks, in which the nodes (be they cells, individuals or populations) interact in a time-dependent fashion. The dynamic behavior of these networks depends on how these nodes are connected, which can…
Disordered spatial networks describe structures and interactions across multiple length scales. The scattering and interference of waves within these networks result in structural phase transitions, localization, diffusion, and band gaps.…
The elastic behavior of materials operating in the linear regime is constrained, by definition, to operations that are linear in the imposed deformation. Though the nonlinear regime holds promise for new functionality, the design in this…
Multistability-induced hysteresis has been widely studied in mechanical systems, but such behavior has proven more difficult to reproduce experimentally in flow networks. Natural flow networks like animal and plant vasculature can exhibit…
Continuum elasticity is a powerful tool applicable in a broad range of physical systems and phenomena. Yet, understanding how and on what scales material disorder may lead to the breakdown of continuum elasticity is not fully understood. We…
The most profound effect of disorder on the elastic response of solids is the nonaffinity of local displacements whereby the atoms (particles, network junctions) do not simply follow the macroscopic strain, as they do in perfect crystals,…
Collagen is the main structural and load-bearing element of various connective tissues, where it forms the extracellular matrix that supports cells. It has long been known that collagenous tissues exhibit a highly nonlinear stress-strain…
Here, the general design and properties of new multiple network elastomers with an exceptional combination of stiffness, toughness, and elasticity are reported. In this paper, it is reported in more detail how the increase in strain at…
The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…
Reconstituted filamentous actin networks with myosin motor proteins form active gels, in which motor proteins generate forces that drive the network far from equilibrium. This motor activity can also strongly affect the network elasticity;…