BM4040 Mechanobiology

Course contents

This course is intended for UG students with some background in mechanics or condensed matter physics. It will be helpful if the students have undertaken introductory courses in solid and fluid mechanics or biomechanics. This course will deal with the description of the mechanical properties of the biological systems at the microscopic scales. We will study some specific biological mechanisms of interaction of biological cells with the extracellular matrix and how it gets affected in disease conditions. The tentative contents for the course are

• Physics of microscale, Langevin equations, Brownian motion, entropic elasticity, polymer models
• Structure of extracellular matrix (ECM), emergence of mechanical properties of ECM from its constituents, constitutive models of ECM
• Mechanical properties of biological cells, how do we study those properties, mechanism of AFM measurements
• Interactions of cell and ECM, focal adhesion dynamics, adhesion dependent and independent mechanisms of cell motility
• Transport at microscopic scales in biological systems
• Force/mechanics sensing by the cells and its response in terms of protein expression
• Role of mechanics in diseases- cancer, hypertension etc.

References

• Introduction to Cell Mechanics and Mechanobiology by Jacobs, Jacobs and Kwon
• Physical Biology of the Cell by Rob Phillips
• Some research papers which will be give in in the class