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Cell-Induced Confinement Effects In Soft Tissue Mechanics, Dawei Song, Jordan L. Shivers, Fred C. Mackintosh, Alison E. Patteson, Paul A. Janmey

Physics - All Scholarship

The mechanical properties of tissues play a critical role in their normal and pathophysiological functions such as tissue development, aging, injury, and disease. Understanding tissue mechanics is important not only for designing realistic biomimetic materials for tissue engineering and drug testing but also for developing novel diagnostic techniques and medical interventions. Tissues are heterogeneous materials consisting of cells confined within extracellular matrices (ECMs), both of which derive their structural integrity, at least in part, from networks of biopolymers. However, the rheology of purified reconstituted biopolymer networks fails to explain many key aspects of tissue mechanics. Notably, purified networks typically soften …