Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 30: Tissue

BP 30.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 15:00–15:30, H43

Inversion and perversion in biomechanics: from microscopic anisotropy to macroscopic chirality. — •Alain Goriely — Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

One of the fundamental problems of bio-physics is to understand the relationship between a microscopic structure and its overall macroscopic response. A paradigm for this problem is chirality. How does a right-handed structure behaves under loads? A simple example motivated by the study of DNA is the extension of a right-handed spring under pure axial load. Would it rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise? Similarly, many plant structures are fibre-reinforced and the problem is to connect the chirality of the fibre with the chirality of the rotation induced by change in pressure. Motivated by different biological experiments on active gels, DNA, plant cell walls, and fungi, I will show that biological systems, through a combination of internal stresses and nonlinear responses offer many puzzling and often counter-intuitive chiral behaviour leading to the interesting possibility of perversion, an inversion in chirality under load or remodeling.