English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Insights

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

Tensegrity structures are special architectures made by floating compressedstruts kept together by a continuous system of tensed cables. The multiplicityof shapes that tensegrity structures can assume and their intrinsic capabilityto be deployable and assembled, so storing (and releasing) elastic energy, havemotivated their success as paradigm -pioneeringly proposed by Donald E. Ingber-to explain some underlying mechanisms regulating dynamics of living cells. Theinterlaced structure of the cell cytoskeleton, constituted by actin andintermediate filaments and microtubules which continuously change their spatialorganization and pre-stresses through polymerization/depolymerization, seems tosteer migration, adhesion and cell division by obeying the tensegrityconstruct. Even though rough calculations lead to estimate discrepancies whencomparing axial stiffness of actin filaments and microtubules and recent workshave shown bent microtubules, no one has yet tried to remove the hypothesis ofrigid struts in tensegrities when used to idealize the cytoskeleton mechanics.With reference to the 30-element tensegrity cell paradigm, we introduce bothcompressibility and bendability of the struts and rewrite the theory to takeinto account nonlinear elasticity of both tendons and bars, so abandoning theclassical linear stress-strain assumptions. By relaxing the hypothesis ofrigidity of the struts, we demonstrate that some quantitative confirmations andmany extreme and somehow counterintuitive mechanical behaviors actuallyexploited by cells for storing/releasing energy, resisting to applied loads anddeforming by modulating their overall elasticity and shape through pre-stresschanges and instability-guided configurational switching, can be alltheoretically found.

Buckling Soft Tensegrities: Fickle Elasticity and Configurational Switching in Living Cells