Mechanoregulation of Hierarchical Assembly and Structural Reinforcement in Living Active Materials
(a) Epithelial tissue is an active material that utilizes cell-cell communication via linker proteins to maintain tissue integrity and (b) reorganize to withstand internal and external mechanical forces.
Active materials are collectives of self-driven units that locally consume free energy to execute self-sustained motion and work. Such active units organize in large-scale structures to generate collective material properties. These individualistic agents that engineer changes in internal organization allow active materials to change under different environmental conditions. Active systems have enormous potential for the design of artificial matter that operates away from equilibrium and exhibits life-like properties, such as self-healing, adaptation, and growth. Achieving this potential requires a quantitative understanding of how specific cues within the material microenvironment facilitate an active transition in material properties. This project combines theoretical and experimental modeling to explore this self-organization in living cells. By elucidating the fundamental mechanisms that govern the transmission of signaling at the subcellular and cellular level to structure and mechanics at the tissue scale, this work will inform the design of a new generation of biologically enabled materials with functionalized emergent behavior.
Our overarching goal is to understand how living barrier layers regulate their hierarchical structure to maintain integrity under mechanical perturbation.
Our hierarchical model connects subcellular changes at cell-cell contacts to cell morphology change and ultimately global tissue reorganization. Not only will this model begin to allow for control of active living materials through diverse modes of mechanical stimulation, but our work will help to design and model synthetic biologically enabled active materials that respond and adapt to changing environmental cues.
