Description du projet
Étudier les propriétés fascinantes de la matière active vivante
La rhéologie désigne une branche de la physique qui explique la déformation et le flux de la matière, applicable à des études biologiques sur la matière active vivante, de manière à comprendre et à contrôler les processus tels que l’auto-guérison ou la métastase du cancer. Toutefois, les propriétés des systèmes actifs denses restent pour le moment mal comprises. Le projet RMAG, financé par l’UE, va mener des études synergiques sur ces phénomènes biologiques grâce à des instruments de physique statistique des verres de spin. Il expliquera la déformation et le flux des systèmes vitreux vivants à travers l’étude de la matière active dans les cellules vivantes et les systèmes reconstruits assemblés à partir de composantes biochimiques de base. Plus important, ce projet permettra une toute nouvelle compréhension de la biologie cellulaire, des sciences des matériaux, ainsi que la possibilité de mettre au point de nouveaux matériaux actifs dotés de capacités fascinantes.
Objectif
The mechanics and flow behaviour of living or active matter is key to biological processes like wound healing or cancer metastasis, but today there is very limited understanding of what governs the mechanical properties of such dense active systems. The proposed project will harness tools from the Statistical Physics of Glasses to provide new fundamental insights into Active Matter mechanics and rheology. This will not only help understand the deformation and flow of living glassy systems but also pave the way to the creation of designer active materials. The project will use particle-based simulations of model active glasses to construct a detailed phenomenology of their behaviour for a broad range of deformation scenarios including steady shear, shear startup and oscillatory shear. The insights from this will be condensed into a mesoscopic model that extends and builds on the very successful Soft Glassy Rheology (SGR) model, by incorporating essential biophysical ingredients and in particular the driving by active processes. This mesoscopic approach will allow scaling up to realistic system sizes and will identify the key parameters that need to be tuned in the design of new active materials. The insights gained on a wide range of systems from the cytoplasm and cellular aggregates to synthetic active matter will have a strong impact both on the academic and, in the medium term, non-academic sectors. They will reach across traditional boundaries to researchers in physics, biology and chemistry and strengthen an important interdisciplinary field within the European Research Area. The outreach opportunities provided by the fascinating behaviour of active glassy materials will be exploited with dedicated dissemination and communication activities targeted at a broad range of audiences.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
37073 Gottingen
Allemagne