IUTAM Symposium on Cellular, Molecular and Tissue Mechanics Proceedings of the IUTAM symposium held at Woods Hole, Mass., USA, June 18-21, 2008

These are the proceedings of an IUTAM Symposium on Cellular, Molecular and Tissue Mechanics, held in the summer of 2008 at Woods Hole, Mass, USA. This groundbreaking meeting brought together mechanicians having an interest in biological systems, with biophysicists and biologists in order to address the mechanical basis of biology at the molecular, cellular and tissue scales.

The meeting explored a wealth of phenomena in cell and molecular biology all of which display a breadth of mechanical influences that may seem surprising at first glance to the traditional mechanician. This arena for the application of methods developed in mechanics has not drawn as much attention as more traditional tissue biomechanics. However, biophysicists, and even biologists apply ideas of elasticity and structural mechanics quite widely in studying molecules and cells. Many critical functions of biomolecules and cells are fundamentally mechanical in origin, and the mechanics of many biomolecules demonstrate scaling laws that are non-classical to traditional structural mechanics and elasticity.

This compilation of the scientific papers presented at the meeting will prove invaluable to researchers in the mechanics of biology as this field develops in the decades to come and takes its place as an acknowledged and central area in biology.

Part I Tissue mechanics: Experimental and computational investigation of viscoelasticity of native and engineered ligament and tendon, by J. Ma, H. Narayanan, K. Garikipati, K. Grosh and E. M. Armda; A comparison of a nonlinear and quasilinear viscoelastic anisotropic model for fibrous tissues, by T. D. Nguyen; Hysteretic behavior of ligaments and tendons: microstructural analysis of damage, softening and non-recoverable strain, by P. Ciarletta and M. Ben Amar; On measuring stress distributions in epithelia, by V. D. Varner and L. A. Taber; A viscoelastic anisotropic model for soft collagenous tissues based on distributed fiber-matrix units, by A. E. Ehret, M. Itskov and G. Weinhold; Part II Cell-substrate interactions: Chemical and mechanical micro-diversity of the extracellular matrix, by T. Volberg, J. Ulmer, J. Spatz and B. Geiger; Tissue-to-cellular deformation coupling in cell-microintegrated elastomeric scaffolds, by J. A. Stella, J. Liao, Y. Hong, W. D. Merryman, W. R. Wagner and M. S.Sacks; Orientational polarizability and stress response of biological cells, by S. A. Safran, R. De and A. Zemel; Universal temporal response of fibroblasts adhering on cyclically stretched substrates, by S. Jungbauer, B. Aragiies, J. P. Spatz and R. Kernkemer; Part III Mechanics of DNA: Elastic and electrostatic model for DNA in rotation-extension experiments, by S. Neukirch, N. Clauvelin and B. Audoly; Shape and energetics of DNA plectonemes, by P. K. Purohit; Part IV Mechanics of biopolymer networks: Constitutive models for the force-extension behavior of biological filaments, by J. S. Palmer, C. E. Castro, M. Arslan and M. C. Boyce; Small strain topological effetcs of biopolymer networks with rigid cross-links, by G. Zagar, P. R. Onck and E. Van der Giessen; Part V Cell adhesion: An observation on Bell's model for molecular bond separation under force, by L. B. Freund; A theoretical study of the thermodynamicsand kinetics of focal adhesion dynamics, by J. E. Olberding, M. D. Thouless, E. M. Armda and K. Garikipati; Tension-induced growth of focal adhesions at cell-substrate interface, by J. Qian, J. Wang and H. Gao; Pattern formation and force generation by cell ensembles in a filamentous matrix, by R. Paul and U. S. Schwarz; Mechano-chemical coupling in shell adhesion, by R. M. Springman and J. L. Bassani; Catch-to-slip bond transition in biological bonds by entropic and energetic elasticity, by Y. Wei; Part VI Growth: Dilation and hypertrophy: A cell-based continuum mechanics approach towards ventricular growth and remodeling, by J. Ulerich, S. Goktepe and E. Kuhl; A morpho-elastic model of hyphal tip growth in filamentous organisms, by A. Goriely, M. Tabor and A. Tongen; Extracellular control of limb regeneration, by S. Calve and H-G. Simon; Part VII Poroelasticity of bone: Bone composite mechanics related to collagen hydration state, by M. L. Oyen and M. Galli