33 citations · 106 across the 6 of their papers we have counts for
6 papers
Synergistic interactions between DNA and actin trigger emergent viscoelastic behavior
Robert Fitzpatrick, Davide Michieletto, Karthik R. Peddireddy +4
Composites of flexible and rigid polymers are ubiquitous in biology and industry alike, yet the physical principles determining their mechanical properties are far from understood.…
Active Disassembly and Reassembly of Actin Networks Induces Distinct Biphasic Mechanics
Bekele J. Gurmessa, Nicholas Bitten, Dan T. Nguyen +4
Actin is a key component of the cytoskeleton, which plays central roles in cell motility, division, growth, and tensile strength. To enable this wide range of transient mechanical…
Nonlinear molecular deformations give rise to stress stiffening, yielding and non-uniform stress propagation in actin networks
Bekele Gurmessa, Shea Ricketts, Rae M. Robertson-Anderson
We use optical tweezers microrheology and fluorescence microscopy to apply nonlinear microscale strains to entangled and crosslinked actin networks, and measure the resulting stres…
The Influence of Thin Film Confinement on Surface Plasticity in Polystyrene and Poly(2-vinylpyridine) Homopolymer and Block Copolymer Films
Bekele J. Gurmessa, Andrew B. Croll
Thin block copolymer films have attracted considerable academic attention because of their ability to self-assemble into various microstructures, many of which have potential techn…
Onset of Plasticity in Thin Polystyrene Films
Bekele J. Gurmessa, Andrew B. Croll
Polymer glasses have numerous advantageous mechanical properties in comparison to other materials. One of the most useful is the high degree of toughness that can be achieved due t…
Entanglement Density Tunes Microscale Nonlinear Response of Entangled Actin
Bekele Gurmessa, Robert Fitzpatrick, Tobias T. Falzone +1
We optically drive a microsphere at constant speed through entangled actin networks of 0.2 - 1.4 mg/ml at rates faster than the critical rate controlling the onset of a nonlinear r…