Coupled helical coils show promising mechanical behavior to be used as tubular organ constructs, e.g., in trachea or urethra. They are potentially easy to manufacture by filament winding of biocompatible and resorbable polymers, and could be tailored for suitable mechanical properties. In this study, coupled helical coils were manufactured by filament winding of melt-extruded polycaprolactone, which was reported to demonstrate desired in vivo degradation speed matching tissue regeneration rate. The tensile and bending stiffness was characterized for a set of couple helical coils with different geometric designs, with right-handed and left-handed polymer helices fused together in joints where the filaments cross. The Young's modulus of unidirectional polycaprolactone filaments was characterized, and used as input together with the structural parameters of the coupled coils in finite element simulations of tensile loading and three-point bending of the coils. A favorable comparison of the numerical and experimental results was found, which paves way for use of the proposed numerical approach in stiffness design under reversible elastic conditions of filament wound tubular constructs.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2013.09.026 | DOI Listing |
Cell
January 2025
Department of Microbiology, Blavatnik Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Center for Integrated Solutions in Infectious Diseases, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Boston, MA, USA. Electronic address:
Nipah virus (NiV) is a bat-borne, zoonotic RNA virus that is highly pathogenic in humans. The NiV polymerase, which mediates viral genome replication and mRNA transcription, is a promising drug target. We determined the cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of the NiV polymerase complex, comprising the large protein (L) and phosphoprotein (P), and performed structural, biophysical, and in-depth functional analyses of the NiV polymerase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicron
January 2025
Health and Medical Research Institute, Department of Life Science and Biotechnology, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba Central-6, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8566, Japan. Electronic address:
Determining the handedness of helical nanocoils using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has traditionally been challenging due to the deep depth of field and transmission nature of TEM, complementary techniques are considered necessary and have been practiced such as low angle rotary shadowing, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), or atomic force microscopy (AFM). These methods require customized sample preparation, making direct comparison difficult. Inspired by the need to identify the helical winding direction from TEM images alone, we developed a specialized tomography grid to capture stereo-pair images, enabling stereopsis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFbioRxiv
November 2024
Laboratory of Structural Cell Biology, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, 50 South Dr., Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA.
SSNA-1 is a fibrillar protein localized at the area where dynamic microtubule remodeling occurs including centrosomes. Despite the important activities of SSNA1 to microtubules such as nucleation, co-polymerization, and lattice sharing microtubule branching, the underlying molecular mechanism have remained unclear due to a lack of structural information. Here, we determined the cryo-EM structure of SSNA-1 at 4.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
Textile and Clothing College, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.
Fiber-based strain sensors, as wearable integrated devices, have shown substantial promise in health monitoring. However, current sensors suffer from limited tunability in sensing performance, constraining their adaptability to diverse human motions. Drawing inspiration from the structure of the spiranthes sinensis, this study introduces a unique textile wrapping technique to coil flexible silver (Ag) yarn around the surface of multifilament elastic polyurethane (PU), thereby constructing a helical structure fiber-based strain sensor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Mol Sci
December 2024
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ 08028, USA.
Biocompatible materials fabricated from natural protein polymers are an attractive alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics. They offer a green, sustainable fabrication method while also opening new applications in biomedical sciences. Available from several sources in the wild and on domestic farms, silk is a widely used biopolymer and one of the strongest natural materials.
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