Article
Blowing Bubbles to Study Living Material
Physics Today
(2011)
Abstract
Living materials respond to stresses, or deformation forces, in profound and surprising ways. Bones become weak if they don’t carry weight. Muscles and soft tissues atrophy, or shrink, if exercise is limited. Whether stem cells differentiate into hard or soft tissue can strongly depend on the stresses they experience during growth. Therefore, to promote or direct the growth of healthy tissue—the challenge of tissue engineering—or to limit the growth of unwanted tissue such as cancerous tumors, scientists must understand the stresses that biological materials experience as they grow and live.
Disciplines
Publication Date
February, 2011
Citation Information
Alfred Crosby and Jennifer J. McManus. "Blowing Bubbles to Study Living Material" Physics Today Vol. 64 Iss. 2 (2011) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alfred_crosby/8/
DOI: 10.1063/1.3554324
The publisher version is located at http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/64/2/10.1063/1.3554324