The interdisciplinary nature of material fractures
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Civil engineers investigate how bridges and the struts of different machinery will break. It turns out that the same research techniques can be applied to a specific set of proteins in biology.
Assistant Professor Daniel Seara recently wrote a commentary with his former postdoc advisor at the University of Chicago, Professor Vincenzo Vitelli, about this very phenomenon for Nature Materials.
Seara’s commentary looks at how the fracture mechanics in civil engineering is similar to the fracture mechanics of biological materials made up of proteins called actin and myosin.
“How do you go from a single egg cell and sperm cell to a fully developed person or animal?” Seara asked. “You can’t just keep on growing as a sphere; you have to break up and change your shape eventually. And this offers some ideas about how biology might manage those controlled breakages to create shapes that are actually beneficial for living things.”
This line of research could impact anyone who is interested in the structural integrity of materials, including mechanical engineers and those who study synthetic and living materials.
“It is definitely an interdisciplinary perspective. It brings together material science, it brings together physics and biology, and offers researchers a robust understanding of the mechanisms by which living materials can fail,” Seara said.
This fundamental research is at the cutting edge of understanding tissue mechanics and biological materials. It will show students that what they learn at the undergraduate level about fracture and material failure doesn’t just hold for concrete or steel. It also holds true for cells, tissues, and proteins within cells.
“The research can be used as a way to tout the interdisciplinary nature of the things that students learn in the mechanical engineering department. This goes beyond engines, struts, and robots. It can go all the way down to the actual things that make living things tick,” Seara said.