Bio-Hairpins And Polymer Spaghetti

When a sturdy material becomes soft and spongy, it's been damaged in some way. But when it comes to complex fluids and biological cells, things may be different. By looking at the microscopic building blocks – known as "filaments" – of biopolymer networks, researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany and the FOM Institute AMOLF in the Netherlands, revealed (Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5060)  that such materials soften by undergoing a transition from an entangled spaghetti of filaments to aligned layers of bow-shaped filaments that slide past each other.  read more

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