High-throughput characterization and data-driven modeling of light-responsive active cytoskeletal composites

Project Description

Cells exhibit remarkable mechanical performance arising from the dynamic cytoskeletal network of biopolymers and molecular motors that serves as the mechanical scaffold and force-generating machinery of animal cells. We aim to build a library of resilient reconfigurable materials that incorporate molecular motors into tunable cytoskeletal composites; and to study the properties of this library to establish foundational relationships between composition, structure and mechanics. We have recently developed assays to use photo-activatable kinesin motors to precisely control active mechanics of in vitro cytoskeletal composites over space and time. This advance provides a vast phase space of composite formulations and illumination properties to explore and optimize. BioPACIFIC MIP (BPM) facilities offer critical infrastructure for high-throughput screening over this phase space to produce robust datasets that will advance our goals and more broadly accelerate materials discovery. The tools we develop for BPM will enable single-sample illumination and patterning of smaller samples, which can be leveraged by the broader materials community.

Instruments