The Erlangen biophysics group studies the fundamental mechanical properties of cells, tissues, and complex soft matter. We strive to understand how cells respond to their mechanical environment, how they interact with their extracellular matrix and with neighboring cells, and what mechanisms they employ for transmigration, invasion, adhesion, contraction, and cell division. We also study the collective behavior of cells in engineered microtissue such as muscle or tumor organoids. Finally, we are interested in collective behavior in animals, in particular penguins. To address these questions, our laboratory collaborates with other research groups worldwide to develop new technologies that draw from various fields, including soft matter physics, molecular cell biology, biochemistry, engineering, and applied mathematics.
Aerophilic surfaces immersed underwater trap films of air known asplastrons. Plastrons have typically been considered impractical forunderwater engineering applications due to their metastable performance.Here, we describe aerophilic titanium alloy (Ti) surfaces with extendedplastron lifetimes that ...
Vimentin is a highly charged intermediate filament protein that inherently forms extended dimeric coiled-coils, which serve as the basic building blocks of intermediate filaments. Under low ionic strength conditions, vimentin filaments dissociate into uniform tetrameric complexes of two anti-paralle...
Numerous cell functions are accompanied by phenotypic changes in viscoelastic properties, and measuring them can help elucidate higher-level cellular functions in health and disease. We present a high-throughput, simple and low-cost microfluidic method for quantitatively measuring the elastic (stora...
During bioprinting, cells are suspended in a viscous bioink and extruded under pressure through small diameter printing needles. The combination of high pressure and small needle diameter exposes cells to considerable shear stress, which can lead to cell damage and death. Approaches to monitor and c...
Physiological and pathological cardiac stress induced by exercise and hypertension, respectively, increase the hemodynamic load for the heart and trigger specific hypertrophic signals in cardiomyocytes leading to adaptive or maladaptive cardiac hypertrophy responses involving a mechanosensitive remo...
