MasterNanosciences, nanotechnologies

Description of the internship.

Fibrous tissue, like tendons or cancer stroma, are made of networks of fibers within which living cells are embedded. Cells constantly remodel these fibers using both chemical and mechanical means. Using an in vitro system similar to [1], our collaborator Jonathan Fouchard in Paris is able to measure how this remodelling leads to an evolution of the mechanical properties of the tissue.
The student will use zero-dimensional mechanical models to try to reproduce the key aspects of the mechanical properties of fibrous tissue with and without cells in different conditions. This will take the form of a visco-elastic model that will include pre-stress terms, which can model the consequences of the activity of cells [2]. Based on the variation of mechanical properties that is observed, we will formulate hypotheses on the way cells modify the network of fibers (stretching of fibers, creation of new bonds between them,…).

Expected skills

Appropriate for a student of the master track M1 Soft Matter and Biophysics

References

[1] Khalilgharibi, N., Fouchard, J., Asadipour, N., Barrientos, R., Duda, M., Bonfanti, A., ... & Charras, G. (2019). Stress relaxation in epithelial monolayers is controlled by the actomyosin cortex. Nature physics, 15(8), 839-847. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116713/
[2] A. Erlich, J. Étienne, J. Fouchard and Tom Wyatt, 2022. Review: How dynamic prestress governs the shape of living systems, from the subcellular to tissue scale. Interface Focus 12(6):058101. arXiv:2209.01440