Invited Paper BI-WeM3
Cells and Extracellular Matrices as Smart Materials: Dissecting and Rebuilding Mechaniobiological Units

Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 8:40 am, Room 211D

Living cells are capable of processing a variety of mechanical signals encoded within their microenvironment, which can in turn act through the cellular structural machinery to regulate many fundamental behaviors. In this sense, cells may be regarded as "smart materials” that dynamically and locally modulate their physical properties in response to environmental stimuli. I will discuss our recent efforts to understand and control these living materials, and to create new, bio-inspired materials that mimic sequence/structure/function relationships of cytoskeletal networks. Key areas of emphasis will include: (1) Understanding and targeting biomechanical regulation of tumor infiltration in the brain; (2) Engineering stimulus-sensitive intrinsically disordered protein brushes based on neuronal cytoskeletal networks. These efforts exemplify the important notion that biomaterials can be extremely valuable platforms with which to understand and control cell behavior, and that understanding cellular structural networks can yield unexpected insights that inform the creation of novel biomaterials.