相关论文: Molecular spring: from spider silk to silkworm sil…

Living systems are built of multiscale-composites: materials formed of components with different properties that are assembled in complex micro- and nano-structures. Such biological multiscale-composites often show outstanding physical…

We propose a model for the mechanical behavior of protein materials. Based on a limited number of experimental macromolecular parameters (persistence and contour lengths, rate of unfolding dissipation) we obtain the macroscopic behavior of…

Spider dragline silk supercontracts as humidity increases, displaying large axial shortening together with a reproducible macroscopic twist. The physical origin of this torsion remains debated and is often attributed to helically arranged…

A simple and robust spring-block model obeying threshold dynamics is introduced to study surface fracture of an overlayer subject to stress induced by adhesion to a substrate. We find a novel phase transition in the crack morphology and…

Motivated by recent experimental observations of capillary-induced spooling of fibers inside droplets both in spider capture silk and in synthetic systems, we investigate the behavior of a fiber packed in a drop. Using a simplified 2D…

Single molecule manipulation techniques reveal that the mechanical resistance of a protein depends on the direction of the applied force. Using a lattice model of polymers, we show that changing the pulling direction leads to different…

We carried out dynamic force manipulations $in$ $silico$ on a variety of superhelical protein fragments from myosin, chemotaxis receptor, vimentin, fibrin, and phenylalanine zippers that vary in size and topology of their $\alpha$-helical…

We document a sequence of bifurcations and elastic patterns in sheared bent sheets of intermediate aspect ratio. The sheets undergo inversion of curvature through the passage of localized features, often in S-shaped pairs. Nested…

Single-molecule pulling experiments on unstructured proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases have measured rupture forces comparable to those for stable folded proteins. To investigate the structural mechanisms of this unexpected force…

We study a minimal extension of the worm-like chain to describe polypeptides having alpha-helical secondary structure. In this model presence/absence of secondary structure enters as a scalar variable that controls the local chain bending…

We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…

There is a growing interest in producing materials with mechanical behaviours similar to those of internal organs. An artificial tissue may be expected to experience several types of compressive and shear deformation in the course of normal…

This work examines the conformational ensemble involved in $\beta$-hairpin folding by means of advanced molecular dynamics simulations and dimensionality reduction. A fully atomistic description of the protein and the surrounding solvent…

We investigate the stretching response of a thick polymer model by means of extensive stochastic simulations. The computational results are synthesized in an analytic expression that characterizes how the force versus elongation curve…

Life presents fascinating examples of self-organization and emergent phenomena. In multi-cellular organisms, a multitude of cells interact to form and maintain highly complex body plans of well-defined size. In this thesis, we investigate…

In this paper we derive a model to describe the important inelastic features associated with the cyclic softening, often referred to as stress-softening, of soft biological tissue. The model developed here includes the notion of multiple…

In this paper, three-dimensional numerical simulations of ballooning in spiders using multiple silk threads are performed using the discrete elastic rods method. The ballooning of spiders is hypothesised to be caused by the presence of the…

Mechanical unfolding of several domains of calmodulin and titin is studied using a Go-like model with a realistic contact map and Lennard-Jones contact interactions. It is shown that this simple model captures the experimentally observed…

The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…

We study the statistical mechanics of double-stranded semi-flexible polymers using both analytical techniques and simulation. We find a transition at some finite temperature, from a type of short range order to a fundamentally different…