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Effect Of Viscoelasticity On Cellular Morphology And Activity, Thomas J. Petet Jr
Effect Of Viscoelasticity On Cellular Morphology And Activity, Thomas J. Petet Jr
Theses and Dissertations
It has been well established that there is a link between substrate stiffness and cellular activities such as proliferation, migration, and differentiation. Less characterized is the link between the time-dependent viscosity of a substrate with those cellular activities. To explore this, PDMS substrates were created with predictably tunable stiffness and viscosity parameters. A simulated model was also developed in parallel to explore the potential effects of viscosity in a computationally predictive way. It was found that the inclusion of viscosity caused a major paradigm shift to a non-zero substrate equilibrium that was sensitive to increases in the substrate stiffness. Finally, …