CAREER: Understanding the Deformability of Biological Filaments from their Atomistic Level Details

职业：从原子级细节了解生物丝的可变形性

• 批准号: 2145615
• 负责人: Sachin Goyal
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of California - Merced
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2026-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2145615&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Understanding; Deformability; Biological; Filaments

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award supports research to examine how the mechanical deformability of biological filaments is influenced by the atom-level details of their chemical structures. Biological filaments include those that form our genetic material and make up biological tissues. Understanding how biological filaments deform is important for both bioengineering and medicine. Eventually, this work may enable scientists to manipulate biological filaments to improve the functional ability of the filaments. For example, manipulating mechanical and chemical signals of genetic material can transform gene therapy, or eventually lead to a new treatment for cancer. This work will also transform the way engineering students learn mechanics of materials. It will also bring a radically new perspective basic mechanics questions, such as "Is it possible to obtain a whole range of deformation behaviors by simply changing the atomistic configurations?" This work will create fundamental knowledge that connects the fields of engineering and technology with basic science and mathematics. It will provide primary and high school students a unique learning perspective and empowers schoolteachers with new knowledge on the topics covered under "From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes." The existing models for simulating the deformations of filaments employ linear constitutive laws that are inadequate to explain the crucial mechanics of their biologically relevant deformations. The goal of this research is to clear this roadblock by developing an inverse approach with a rod model framework for estimating the constitutive laws of thin filaments from the data obtained from their all-atom simulations and physical experiments. The related research objectives include: (i) analysis of how the spatial configuration of atoms as well as the bond potentials individually influence the constitutive laws; (ii) development of educational tools and virtual labs for engineering students to learn the mechanics of beams along with some novel concepts. Some of the fundamental questions that will be answered include: (1) how base-pair sequence of the non-coding segments of the genetic filament influences their structural deformability that govern gene expression; (2) how one can design a filament to have a certain constitutive behavior by changing its atomistic structure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项全部或部分根据2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。该教师早期职业发展（CAREER）奖支持研究，以研究生物细丝的机械变形性如何受到其化学结构的原子级细节的影响。生物丝包括那些形成我们的遗传物质和构成生物组织的丝。 了解生物细丝如何变形对生物工程和医学都很重要。最终，这项工作可能使科学家能够操纵生物细丝，以提高细丝的功能能力。例如，操纵遗传物质的机械和化学信号可以改变基因疗法，或最终导致癌症的新疗法。这项工作也将改变工程专业学生学习材料力学的方式。它也将带来一个全新的视角基本力学问题，如“是否有可能获得一个完整的范围内的变形行为，通过简单地改变原子的配置？“这项工作将创造基础知识，将工程和技术领域与基础科学和数学联系起来。它将为中小学生提供一个独特的学习视角，并为学校教师提供关于“从分子到有机体：结构和过程”所涵盖主题的新知识。“现有的模拟细丝变形的模型采用线性本构定律，不足以解释其生物相关变形的关键力学。本研究的目标是通过开发一种逆方法来清除这一障碍，该方法采用杆模型框架，从全原子模拟和物理实验获得的数据中估计细丝的本构关系。相关的研究目标包括：（i）分析原子的空间构型以及键势如何单独影响本构律;（ii）开发教育工具和虚拟实验室，供工程专业学生学习梁的力学沿着一些新概念。一些基本的问题将被回答包括：（1）如何碱基对序列的非编码段的遗传细丝影响其结构变形，支配基因表达;（二）该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。