ABSTRACT

The Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechano-Biology (CEMB) brings together leading researchers from a diverse group of disciplines and institutions to investigate, understand, and innovate at the intersection of biology, mechanics, and engineering. The mission of this Center is to discover the governing principles of molecular and cellular communication, provide the intellectual foundations and materials for engineering new and powerful cell-based devices, and to train students in the multilingual foundations of engineering mechano-biology preparing them to be innovative leaders able to explore and exploit these interconnections to impact society. This award supports an innovative network of researchers and educators to investigate the fundamental relationships between cells, their environment, and the forces that act upon them. The team will train a new generation of scientists and engineers in the emerging discipline of Mechano-biology, and will partner with industry to translate new scientific discoveries into products and solutions for the health and prosperity of the nation.

Engineering Mechano-biology, with its focus on the interactions between structure, mechanics, and function, will have a major impact on our ability to construct and repair tissues, organs, and implants; to adapt plants to changing environments; to treat inflammation and fibrosis; to understand the effects of exercise, activity, and trauma; and to engineer optimized synthetic and biomimetic materials. This interdisciplinary field will enable fundamental discoveries in biological function and spur the development of cutting edge technologies for interrogation and guidance of plant and animal structures on multiple scales. Projects will span the length and time scales over which forces operate: from single molecules to supramolecular complexes, cells, tissues and whole organisms, and from milliseconds to hours, weeks or months. Major research efforts will focus on three Integrated Research Thrusts (IRTs) requiring new interfaces across disciplines and organized following a cell's hierarchical perspective from mechano-responsive molecules to signaling pathways to the extracellular niche. Thrust 1: Mechano-biology of Biomolecules and Nanostructures will characterize and engineer proteins and molecules, enabling detection and manipulation of the pN and nm mechano-responsiveness of proteins, scaffolds, and cells to probe or generate increasingly complex engineered mechano-biological reagents, materials, and systems. Thrust 2: Mechano-biology of Cells and Signaling will elucidate how cells dynamically react to mechanical forces through feedback between the cytoskeleton, the nucleus and the surrounding matrix, uncover the ways mechano-signaling contributes to cell-cell communication, and discover how cells distinguish and integrate mechano-signals across length and time scales. Thrust 3: Mechano-biology of Tissues, Materials and Microenvironments will identify matrix-based mechanical cues in plants and animals and investigate the fabrication of bulk gels, fibrous networks, and engineered micro-devices. This will lead to the generation of materials with mechano-responsive properties as well as novel means for studying the structural and biophysical cues in mechano-transduction.

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