相关论文: Strain-induced alignment in collagen gels

Large-scale force generation is essential for biological functions such as cell motility, embryonic development, and muscle contraction. In these processes, forces generated at the molecular level by motor proteins are transmitted by…

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…

The protein folding problem has attracted an increasing attention from physicists. The problem has a flavor of statistical mechanics, but possesses the most common feature of most biological problems -- the profound effects of evolution. I…

Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…

Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…

We propose a general multiscale approach for the mechanical behavior of three-dimensional networks of macromolecules undergoing strain-induced unfolding. Starting from a (statistically based) energetic analysis of the macromolecule…

Collagen is a key component of the extracellular matrix and well-oriented domains of collagen are relevant for mimicking the local cell environment in vitro. While there has been significant attention directed towards the alignment of…

Inspired by the complex influence of the globular crosslinking proteins on the formation of biofilament bundles in living organisms, we study and analyze a theoretical model for the structure and thermodynamics of bundles of helical…

Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…

Intermediate filaments are the least explored among the large cytoskeletal elements. We show here that they display conformational anomalies in narrow microfluidic channels. Their unusual behavior can be understood as the consequence of a…

The hygro-thermo-expansive response of fibrous networks involves deformation phenomena at multiple length scales. The moisture or temperature induced expansion of individual fibres is transmitted in the network through the inter-fibre…

Structure formation and constant reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton are key requirements for the function of living cells. Here we show that a minimal reconstituted system consisting of actin filaments, crosslinking molecules and…

Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…

Reinforced elastic sheets surround us in daily life, from concrete shell buildings to biological structures such as the arthropod exoskeleton or the venation network of dicotyledonous plant leaves. Natural structures are often highly…

Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…

Vascular and non-vascular cells often form an interconnected network in vitro, similar to the early vascular bed of warm blooded embryos. Our time-lapse recordings show that the network forms by extending sprouts, i.e., multicellular linear…

Intelligent biological systems are characterized by their embodiment in a complex environment and the intimate interplay between their nervous systems and the nonlinear mechanical properties of their bodies. This coordination, in which the…

As a nonlocal extension of continuum mechanics, peridynamics has been widely and effectively applied in different fields where discontinuities in the field variables arise from an initially continuous body. An important component of the…

Collagen fibrils are versatile self-assembled structures that provide mechanical integrity within mammalian tissues. The radius of collagen fibrils vary widely depending on experimental conditions \textit{in vitro} or anatomical location…

A quantitative understanding of how cells interact with their extracellular matrix via molecular bonds is fundamental for many important processes in cell biology and engineering. In these interactions, the deformability of cells and matrix…