Penn Bioengineering: Modeling Contractile Forces

Muscles stretch and contract when we walk, and skin splits open and knits back together when we get a paper cut. To study these contractile forces, researchers built a three-dimensional scaffold that mimics tissue in an organism. First, they poured a mixture of cells and elastic collagen over microscopic posts in a dish. Then they studied how the cells pulled and released the posts as they formed a web of tissue. To measure forces between posts, the researchers developed a computer model. Their findings—which show that contractile forces vary throughout the tissue—could have a wide range of medical applications. Courtesy of Christopher Chen, University of Pennsylvania and the National institutes of Health.

Full Story: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1675

Chris Chens Lab: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~chenlab/index.html

NIH: http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/biobeat/09-10-21/index.html#1

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Education

Tags:

• Penn
• University of Pennsylvania
• Bioengineering
• Christopher Chen
• NIH