Engineering Mechanobiology

3 units

Engineering Mechanobiology is a new paradigm for understanding and manipulating the biological function of plants, animals, and their cells. Mechanical force has emerged as a critical component of all biological systems, providing mechanisms to sculpt plants and animals during morphogenesis, to enable cell migration, polarization, proliferation, and differentiation in response to physical changes in the environment, and to modulate the function of single molecules. This course provides a foundation for understanding these factors across plant and animal cells. The course begins with an introduction to plant and animal cell biology and principles of signaling, then progresses to an overview of the cell wall and ECM and an introduction to the mechanics and statistical mechanics of solid, viscoelastic, and fibrous continua. The course then focuses on the questions of how do cells feel, how do cells converse with the ECM and wall, and how do cells remember? Knowledge of undergraduate calculus and physics is expected.