Related papers: Cell strain-stiffening drives cell breakout from e…
Mechanical properties of the tissue engineering scaffolds are known to play a crucial role in tissue regeneration. Here, we have utilized discrete network and finite element models to study fibrous scaffold mechanics and its dependence on…
Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
During embryonic morphogenesis, tissues undergo dramatic deformations in order to form functional organs. Similarly, in adult animals, living cells and tissues are continually subjected to forces and deformations. Therefore, the success of…
Precipitation of fine particles into the base material of a metal is a potent strengthening mechanism. This is numerically analyzed within a continuum framework based on a higher order strain gradient plasticity theory and by use of an…
Disordered elastic networks provide a framework for describing a wide variety of physical systems, ranging from amorphous solids, through polymeric fibrous materials to confluent cell tissues. In many cases, such networks feature two widely…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…
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…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
The adhesion of cell membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. In this article, we review recent results from simulations and theory that lead to novel insights on how the binding equilibrium…
We investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of adherent cells characterized by a highly anisotropic actin cytoskeleton. Using a combination of theoretical work and experiments on micropillar arrays, we demonstrate that the…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
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…
A plethora of natural and industrial shear-driven granular flows exhibit particle-size segregation. Its occurrence is commonly attributed to two primary mechanisms: kinetic sieving and squeeze expulsion. While kinetic sieving is relatively…
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…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
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…
Contractile cytoskeletal structures such as fine actomyosin meshworks and stress fibers are essential force-generators for mechanical phenomena in live cells, including motility, morphogenesis, and mechanosensing. While there have been many…