Stress management in composite biopolymer networks

Abstract

Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen fibres, the principal load-bearing component of tissues. However, collagen fibres in tissues are embedded in a soft hydrated polysaccharide matrix which generates substantial internal stresses whose effect on tissue mechanics is unknown. Here, by combining mechanical measurements and computer simulations, we show that networks composed of collagen fibres and a hyaluronan matrix exhibit synergistic mechanics characterized by an enhanced stiffness and delayed strain-stiffening. We demonstrate that the polysaccharide matrix has a dual effect on the composite response involving both internal stress and elastic reinforcement. Our findings elucidate how tissues can tune their strain-sensitivity over a wide range and provide a novel design principle for synthetic materials with programmable mechanical properties.

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• The Role of Cell-Matrix Interactions in Connective Tissue Mechanics
• Athermal Fracture of Elastic Networks: How Rigidity Challenges the Unavoidable Size-Induced Brittleness
• Continuum elastic models for force transmissions in biopolymer gels
• Stringiness of Hyaluronic Acid Emulsions
• Structural features and nonlinear rheology of self-assembled networks of cross-linked semiflexible polymers
• Effective Medium Theory for Mechanical Phase Transitions of Fiber Networks
• TopoGEN: topology-driven microstructure generation for in silico modeling of fiber network mechanics
• More is less in unpercolated active solids
• Variational approximation method for the long-range force transmission in biopolymer gels