Biopolymers help visualize mechanical strain

Posted in News Story

Georgetown Physicists Prof. Daniel Blair and Richard Arevalo, in a collaboration with scientists at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have unlocked a sixty year old mystery about the way polymers react when strained. Using a technique developed in the Blairlab, know as confocal-rheology, the team were able to visualize the response of polymers derived from muscle cells. Their results provide the first insights into the microscopic behavior of these materials when they are repeatedly strained and are published in Nature Communications.