Mechanics of the cell

Название: Mechanics of the cell
Автор: Boal D.
Издательство: Cambridge
Год издания: 2012
Страниц: 622
ISBN: 978-0-521-13069-1
Язык: Английский
Формат: PDF
Качество: отличное
Размер: 18 Мб
The cells of our bodies represent a very large class of systems whose structural components often are both complex and soft. A system may be complex in the sense that it may comprise several components having quite different mechanical characteristics, with the result that the behavior of the system as a whole reflects an interplay between the characteristics of the components in isolation.
The mechanical components themselves tend to be soft: for example, the compression resistance of a protein network may be more than an order of magnitude lower than that of the air we breathe. Cells have fluid interiors and often exist in a fluid environment, with the result that the motion of the cell and its components is strongly damped and very unlike ideal projectile motion as described in introductory physics courses. While some of the physics relevant to such soft biomaterials has been established for more than a century, there are other aspects, for example the thermal undulations of fluid and polymerized sheets, that have been investigated only in the past few decades.