TY - JOUR T1 - MicroMotility: State of the art, recent accomplishments and perspectives on the mathematical modeling of bio-motility at microscopic scales JF - Mathematics in Engineering Y1 - 2020 A1 - Daniele Agostinelli A1 - Roberto Cerbino A1 - Del Alamo, Juan C A1 - Antonio DeSimone A1 - Stephanie Höhn A1 - Cristian Micheletti A1 - Giovanni Noselli A1 - Eran Sharon A1 - Julia Yeomans KW - active matter KW - adhesive locomotion KW - cell motility KW - cell sheet folding KW - knotted DNA KW - topological defects KW - unicellular swimmers KW - unjamming transition AB -

Mathematical modeling and quantitative study of biological motility (in particular, of motility at microscopic scales) is producing new biophysical insight and is offering opportunities for new discoveries at the level of both fundamental science and technology. These range from the explanation of how complex behavior at the level of a single organism emerges from body architecture, to the understanding of collective phenomena in groups of organisms and tissues, and of how these forms of swarm intelligence can be controlled and harnessed in engineering applications, to the elucidation of processes of fundamental biological relevance at the cellular and sub-cellular level. In this paper, some of the most exciting new developments in the fields of locomotion of unicellular organisms, of soft adhesive locomotion across scales, of the study of pore translocation properties of knotted DNA, of the development of synthetic active solid sheets, of the mechanics of the unjamming transition in dense cell collectives, of the mechanics of cell sheet folding in volvocalean algae, and of the self-propulsion of topological defects in active matter are discussed. For each of these topics, we provide a brief state of the art, an example of recent achievements, and some directions for future research.

VL - 2 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3934/mine.2020011 ER - TY - JOUR T1 - Hybridization in nanostructured DNA monolayers probed by AFM: theory versus experiment JF - Nanoscale. 2012 Mar; 4(5):1734-41 Y1 - 2012 A1 - Alessandro Bosco A1 - Fouzia Bano A1 - Pietro Parisse A1 - Loredana Casalis A1 - Antonio DeSimone A1 - Cristian Micheletti AB - Nanografted monolayers (NAMs) of DNA show novel physico-chemical properties that make them ideally suited for advanced biosensing applications. In comparison with alternative solid-phase techniques for diagnostic DNA detection, NAMs have the advantage of combining a small size with a high homogeneity of the DNA surface coverage. These two properties favour the extreme miniaturization and ultrasensitivity in high-throughput biosensing devices. The systematic use of NAMs for quantitative DNA (and protein) detection has so far suffered from the lack of a control on key fabrication parameters, such as the ss- or ds-DNA surface coverage. Here we report on a combined experimental-computational study that allows us to estimate the surface density of the grafted DNA by analyzing the sample mechanical response, that is the DNA patch height vs. applied tip load curves. It is shown that the same analysis scheme can be used to detect the occurrence of hybridization with complementary strands in solution and estimate its efficiency. Thanks to these quantitative relationships it is possible to use a single AFM-based setup to: (i) fabricate a DNA NAM, (ii) control the DNA surface coverage, and (iii) characterize its level of hybridization helping the design of NAMs with pre-determined fabrication parameters. PB - Royal Society of Chemistry U1 - 6998 U2 - Physics U4 - -1 ER -