Stress-fiber mechanics and cell mechano-sensitivity

In recent years, research in cell biology has shown that mechanics is a key to cell response, differentiation, and disease. For instance, an increasing number of observations have shown that the ability of cells to contract, spread, and differentiate is highly dependent on the stiffness and architecture of the surrounding matrix. Although the origins of these intriguing behaviors are still poorly understood, it is now clear that cells fully make use of cross-talks between mechanics, chemistry, and transport processes to organize their structure, generate forces, and make appropriate decisions. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of mechano-transduction, this presentation will introduce a multiscale approach to the actin cytoskeleton of an adherent scale, spanning from the molecular to the cellular scale. At the cellular scale, the cytoskeleton is viewed as an active gel, which can acquire a specific structure and exert contractile forces in response to its mechanical environment. The way by which these forces arise and stabilize the cytoskeleton is explained in terms of a fine scale model of the interactions between the actin filaments and myosin motors found within each individual sarcomere of a stress fiber. At this scale, a cross-bridge model is used to explain the stabilization of active acto–myosin complex in the presence of so-called a catch-bond behavior between the two molecular units. The idea of a catch-bond response acto–myosin assembly was indeed discovered recently but never related to the mechano-sensitivity of stress-fibers. After further derivations, these concepts are summarized into a coupled system of differential equation whose solution is analyzed using numerical methods such as finite elements. Numerical simulations show that the model is able to capture the dependency of cell contraction on substrate stiffness, adhesion or the application of external force on the cell boundary. The very good agreement between model predictions and experimental observations not only confirms that catch bonds may play a significant role in the mechano-sensitivity of adherent cells, but also pinpoint the importance of the hierarchical structure of stress-fibers across the scales

Growth mechanics in degradable hydrogel scaffolds

Despite tremendous advances in the field of tissue engineering, a number of obstacles are still hindering its successful translation to the clinic. One of these challenges has been to design cell-laden scaffolds that can provide an appropriate environment for cells to successfully synthesize new tissue while providing a mechanical support that can resist physiological loads at the early stage of in situ implementation. A solution to this problem has been to balance tissue growth and scaffold degradation by creating new hydrogel systems that possess both hydrolytic and enzymatic degradation behaviors. Very little is known, however, about the complex behavior of these systems, emphasizing the need for a rigorous mathematical approach that can eventually assist and guide experimental advances. This presentation will introduce a mathematical and numerical formulation based on mixture theory, to describe the degradation, swelling, and transport of extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules released by cartilage cells (chondrocytes) within a hydrogel scaffold. The model particularly investigates the relative roles of hydrolytic and enzymatic degradations on ECM diffusion and their impacts on two important outcomes: the extent of ECM transport (and deposition) and the evolution of the scaffold’s mechanical integrity. Numerical results based on finite element show that if properly tuned, enzymatic degradation differs from hydrolytic degradation, in that it can create a degradation front that is a key to maintain scaffold stiffness while allowing ECM deposition. These results, therefore, suggest a hydrogel design that could enable successful in situ cartilage tissue engineering

Xanthomonas albilineans is able to move outside of the sugarcane xylem despite its reduced genome and the absence of a Hrp type III secretion system.

Xanthomonas albilineans, the causal agent of leaf scald disease of sugarcane, is a pathogen that experienced genome reduction during its speciation. Additionally, this xanthomonad is notably missing the Hrp type III secretion system and the xanthan gene cluster that are commonly found in pathogenic Xanthomonas species. X. albilineans was up to now considered as limited to the xylem of sugarcane. However, recently published studies suggested that X. albilineans was able to invade tissues other than the xylem of sugarcane leaves but the occurrence of X. albilineans outside the xylem has not been clearly proven. In this study, we used confocal microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to investigate the localization of this pathogen in diseased leaves and stalks of sugarcane. Three sugarcane cultivars with different levels of resistance to leaf scald were inoculated with the green fluorescent protein labelled X. albilineans strains XaFL07-1 (from Florida) and GPE PC73 (from Guadeloupe). Sections of sugarcane leaves and stalks were examined 8-60 days after inoculation in order to localize X. albilineans in the different plant tissues. Confocal microscopy observation of symptomatic leaves confirmed the presence of the pathogen in the protoxylem and the metaxylem, however, X. albilineans was also observed in the phloem, the parenchyma and the bulliform cells of the leaves. Similarly, the protoxylem and the metaxylem of infected sugarcane stalks were invaded by X. albilineans. Surprisingly, the pathogen was also observed in apparently intact storage cells of the stalk and in the intercellular spaces between these cells. Several of these observations made by confocal microscopy have been confirmed by transmission electron microscopy. X. albilineans can therefore no longer be considered as a xylem-limited pathogen. To our knowledge, this is the first description of a plant pathogenic bacterium invading apparently intact non-vascular plant tissue and multiplying in parenchyma cells. The mechanisms and virulence factors used by X. albilineans to enter and invade different tissues of sugarcane remain to be identified. (Résumé d'auteur

A TBLMI Framework for Harmonic Robust Control

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate that problems related to stability and robust control in the harmonic context can be effectively addressed by formulating them as semidefinite optimization problems, invoking the concept of infinite-dimensional Toeplitz Block LMIs (TBLMIs). One of the central challenges tackled in this study pertains to the efficient resolution of these infinite-dimensional TBLMIs. Exploiting the structured nature of such problems, we introduce a consistent truncation method that effectively reduces the problem to a finite-dimensional convex optimization problem. By consistent we mean that the solution to this finite-dimensional problem allows to closely approximate the infinite-dimensional solution with arbitrary precision. Furthermore, we establish a link between the harmonic framework and the time domain setting, emphasizing the advantages over Periodic Differential LMIs (PDLMIs). We illustrate that our proposed framework is not only theoretically sound but also practically applicable to solving H 2 and H$\infty$ harmonic control design problems. To enable this, we extend the definitions of H 2 and H$\infty$ norms into the harmonic space, leveraging the concepts of the harmonic transfer function and the average trace operator for Toeplitz Block operators. Throughout this paper, we support our theoretical contributions with a range of illustrative examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach

La stratégie des vertus

Si les principes éthiques ont évolué au cours des siècles, ils orientent aujourd'hui comme hier les jugements de l'homme. La Vertu est un idéal qui n'a pas pris une ride. Mais la connaît-on vraiment ? En voici les effigies, préservées dans la pierre depuis le Moyen-Âge

Smart polymers for advanced applications: a mechanical perspective review

Responsive materials, as well as active structural systems, are nowadays widely used to develop unprecedented smart devices, sensors or actuators; their functionalities come from the ability of responding to environmental stimuli with a detectable reaction. Depending on the responsive material under study, the triggering stimuli can have a different nature, ranging from physical (temperature, light, electric or magnetic field, mechanical stress, ...), chemical (pH, ligands, …), or biological (enzymes, …) type. Such a responsiveness can be obtained by properly designing the meso- or macroscopic arrangement of the constitutive elements, as occurs in metamaterials, or can be obtained by using responsive materials per se, whose responsiveness comes from the chemistry underneath their microstructure. In fact, when the responsiveness at the molecular level is properly organized, the nanoscale response can be collectively detected at the macroscale, leading to a responsive material. In the present paper, we review the huge world of responsive polymers, by outlining the main features, characteristics and responsive mechanisms of smart polymers and by providing a mechanical modeling perspective, both at the molecular as well as at the continuum scale level. We aim at providing a comprehensive overview of the main features and modeling aspects of the most diffused smart polymers. The quantitative mechanical description of active materials plays a key role in their development and use, enabling the design of advanced devices as well as to engineer the materials’ microstructure according to the desired functionality

A harmonic framework for the identification of linear time-periodic systems

This paper presents a novel approach for the identification of linear time-periodic (LTP) systems in continuous time. This method is based on harmonic modeling and consists in converting any LTP system into an equivalent LTI system with infinite dimension. Leveraging specific harmonic properties, we demonstrate that solving this infinite-dimensional identification problem can be reduced to solving a finitedimensional linear least-squares problem. The result is an approximation of the original solution with an arbitrarily small error. Our approach offers several significant advantages. The first one is closely tied to the harmonic system's inherent LTI characteristic, along with the Toeplitz structure exhibited by its elements. The second advantage is related to the regularization property achieved through the integral action when computing the phasors from input and state trajectories. Finally, our method avoids the computation of signals' derivative. This sets our approach apart from existing methods that rely on such computations, which can be a notable drawback, especially in continuous-time settings. We provide numerical simulations that convincingly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, even in scenarios where signals are corrupted by noise