Abstract: Living systems are capable of remarkable mechanical behavior. Whether a neuronal axon crawls across a growing brain to a precise location ten thousand cell-diameters away, or a striker scores a sensational goal at a soccer match, these achievements continue to inspire. Are there general principles that underlie biological mechanics across scales? While most approaches focus on “hardware” properties like force and stiffness, our lab is also interested in the “software” signals that sense, control, and ultimately orchestrate hardware. We explore the hardware-software interface by studying reductionist, experimental model systems. In this talk, I’ll demonstrate three examples of biologically inspired systems: depletion-induced bundling of actin filaments, pulsatile activation of actomyosin active gels, and muscle-like forces in a weight-lifting robot. All of these examples not only aim to understand the thermodynamic, non-equilibrium meta-stability of life. We also leverage these systems to develop designs for novel technologies.
Bio: José Alvarado is an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his master’s in physics at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 2008, and his PhD in physics from the VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 2013. He went on to do a postdoc in mechanical engineering at MIT, before starting his lab at UT in 2019. The Alvarado lab explores the interface between biological “hardware and software” by studying experimental model systems that are inspired by cellular and organismal mechanics.
Website: https://alv.ac/
Host: Shinuo Weng