相关论文: Biopolymers: life's mechanical scaffolds
Understanding how fluctuations propagate across spatial scales is central to our understanding of inanimate matter from turbulence to critical phenomena. In contrast to physical systems, biological systems are organized into a hierarchy of…
A living cell uses long tubular appendages for locomotion and sensory purposes. Hence, assembling and maintaining a protrusion of correct length is crucial for its survival and overall performance. Usually the protrusions lack the machinery…
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a highly complex structure through which biochemical and mechanical signals are transmitted. In processes of cell migration, the ECM also acts as a scaffold, providing structural support to cells as well as…
The macroscopic behaviour of active matter arises from nonequilibrium microscopic processes. In soft materials, active stresses typically drive macroscopic shape changes, which in turn alter the geometry constraining the microscopic…
Life has a special status, it even has its own science: biology. In many ways, the logic of life seems to differ from that of atoms, molecules, planets, or any other `inanimate object'. However, life is increasingly measured using…
Fiber-reinforcement is a universal feature of many biological tissues. It involves the interplay between fiber stiffness, fiber orientation, and the elastic properties of the matrix, influencing pattern formation and evolution in layered…
Cell biomechanics involve a great number of complex phenomena that are fundamental to the evolution of life itself and other associated processes, ranging from the very early stages of embryo-genesis to the maintenance of damaged structures…
Polymers and composite materials play an essential role in accelerator and detectors technology, with varying roles that range from electrical insulation and structural support to thermal management. This paper provides a general review of…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Recently the materials possessing structure of molecular and supramolecular matrix are more and more actively studied. They are relative to many polymeric materials of a technological origin, such as rubber, and living biological tissues.…
One problem of non-crystalline condensed matter (soft matter) is creating the right equilibrium between elasticity and viscosity, referred to as viscoelasticity. Manifestations of that can be found in everyday live, where the…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…
Biomolecular condensates govern essential cellular processes yet elude description by traditional equilibrium models. This roadmap, distilled from structured discussions at a workshop and reflecting the consensus of its participants,…
Statistical mechanics is one of the most powerful and elegant tools in the quantitative sciences. One key virtue of statistical mechanics is that it is designed to examine large systems with many interacting degrees of freedom, providing a…
Synthetic and biological living polymers are self-assembling chains whose chain length distributions (CLDs) are dynamic. We show these dynamics are ultrasensitive: even a small perturbation (e.g. temperature jump) non-linearly distorts the…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Cellular biology exists embedded in a world dominated by random dynamics and chance. Many vital molecules and pieces of cellular machinery diffuse within cells, moving along random trajectories as they collide with the other biomolecular…
The mechanisms by which organs acquire their functional structure and realize its maintenance (or homeostasis) over time are still largely unknown. In this paper, we investigate this question on adipose tissue. Adipose tissue can represent…
Biomolecules are the prime information processing elements of living matter. Most of these inanimate systems are polymers that compute their structures and dynamics using as input seemingly random character strings of their sequence,…
Tissue engineering aims to grow artificial tissues \emph{in vitro} to replace those in the body that have been damaged through age, trauma or disease. A recent approach to engineer artificial cartilage involves seeding cells within a…