相关论文: A master relation defines the nonlinear viscoelast…
A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
Cell mechanical properties are fundamental to the organism but remain poorly understood. We report a comprehensive phenomenological framework for the nonlinear rheology of single fibroblast cells: a superposition of elastic stiffening and…
We present a statistical mechanical study of stiff polymers, motivated by experiments on actin filaments and the considerable current interest in polymer networks. We obtain simple, approximate analytical forms for the force-extension…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
Dynamically crosslinked semiflexible biopolymers such as the actin cytoskeleton govern the mechanical behavior of living cells. Semiflexible biopolymers nonlinearly stiffen in response to mechanical loads, whereas the crosslinker dynamics…
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…
Intermediate filaments are cytoskeletal proteins that are key regulators of cell mechanics, a role which is intrinsically tied to their hierarchical structure and their unique ability to accommodate large axial strains. However, how the…
The mechanical properties of cells are dominated by the cytoskeleton, an interconnected network of long elastic filaments. The connections between the filaments are provided by crosslinking proteins, which constitute, next to the filaments,…
The actin cytoskeleton of adherent tissue cells often condenses into filament bundles contracted by myosin motors, so-called stress fibers, which play a crucial role in the mechanical interaction of cells with their environment. Stress…
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…
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…
Composites of flexible and rigid polymers are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, yet the physical principles determining their mechanical properties are far from understood. Here, we couple force spectroscopy with large-scale…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
Mechanical forces generated by myosin II molecular motors drive diverse cellular processes, most notably shape change, division and locomotion. These forces may be transmitted over long range through the cytoskeletal medium - a disordered,…
The interplay between cytoskeletal architecture and the nonlinearity of the interactions due to bucklable filaments plays a key role in modulating the cell's mechanical stability and affecting its structural rearrangements. We study a model…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
The mechanical behaviour of solid biological tissues has long been described using models based on classical continuum mechanics. However, the classical continuum theories of elasticity and viscoelasticity cannot easily capture the…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
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…