Reis said that their work could also be extended to a variety of applications in addition to biomechanics. "Beyond important fundamental questions of biological material properties, these studies may also find applications in the design of thin shell geometries with specific mechanical behaviors such as differential rigidity and buckling." Huang, a bioengineer at Stanford University who did not work on the research. "The field of cellular mechanics is always searching for theoretical models through which to extract material parameters from experiments," said K.C. This is important when developing new treatments because if a cell is under a lot of internal pressure, it might be harder for a new medicine to seep inside, but could be more prone to bursting. "Our formula is that if you apply a force on that shell, and it deforms, you can predict how thick the shell is," said Lazarus.Ĭonversely, a researcher can deduce the cell’s internal pressure by knowing the thickness and material properties of a cell’s outer casing. Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer Arnaud Lazarus, and lead author of the second paper, said that the two teams’ work could be used to infer the properties of an ovoid without breaking it open. In the past, researchers studying the structural properties of ovoids had to approximate their calculations using equations for other shapes for simplicity's sake. "What's new is that we kind of tried to study a class of shapes," said Dominic Vella, a mathematician at the University of Oxford, in the U.K., and lead author of one of the papers. The sharper the curve of an ovoid, the stronger and more rigid it is at its tip. It's well known that the strongest part of an ovoid is at its narrow tip. Up to now, finding the rigidity of any size of egg-shaped shell had to either be approximated with estimates based on the properties of spheres and cylinders, or measured directly using specialized lab equipment. Two different research teams independently developed a way to derive how strong an egg-like object is based on its shape and what it's made of.Įgg-shaped objects, or ovoids, are common throughout nature, and can be seen in chicken eggs, the organelles of cells and the outer shells of some viruses. This new information could help bioengineers better understand the biological structure of egg-shaped cells - and how those cells might respond to medications. (ISNS) - Breaking an egg is a lot easier along its side than at its tip, and scientists can now say exactly why - and by how much.
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