Soft Biological Materials

Start thinking about biological materials as soft matter and the importance of molecular self-assembly in biology. 

Familiarize yourself with the structure of the cell membrane, the cell cytoskeleton, protein structure, and DNA. 

Learn about some of the experimental techniques used to study soft biological materials. 

Throughout this book, we have examined some basic classifications of soft materials, from liquid crystals and surfactants to colloids and polymers. At this point, you should be familiar with the characteristics of these materials. As you have seen, there is considerable crossover between these material classifications, but common themes unite the field. In this chapter, we look at the different soft materials that can be found in the living cell. Aside from our bones and teeth, the body is primarily composed of soft tissues, so we can naturally classify the building blocks of these tissues as soft materials, from the macroscopic level of fat and muscles, down to the microscopic structures inside individual cells. 

---

Modification of an AFM to operate in a dynamic mode aids the study of soft biological materials [58]. Here a stiff cantilever is oscillated near its resonant frequency with an amplitude of about 0.5 nm forces are detected as a shift to a new frequency... 

Artificial Soft Biologies. In addition to sutures, polymers are used for a number of biomedical applications, as illustrated in Figure 5.128. Polymers used for hard structural applications such as dentures and bones are presented in this figure, but will be described in the next section. In this section, we will concentrate on polymers for soft biological material applications and will limit the description to mechanical properties as much as possible. 

Freeze drying biological specimens Freeze drying may be used to prepare specimens for scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Formerly, soft biological materials were chemically fixed and then air dried. Tissue structure coUapsed and smaller appendages... 

Levental I, Georges PC, Janmey PA (2007) Soft biological materials and their impact on cell function. Soft Matter 3 299-306. doi 10.1039/B610522J... 

---