These Materials Can Sense Trouble — Literally

The emerging multidisciplinary field of mechanobiology is leading to advancements in constructing engineered tissues and organs, repairing and regenerating damaged tissue, providing therapy for diseases, improving plant growth and agricultural products, and developing new or self-repairing materials. The field studies how cells sense and respond to mechanical signals.

New research in this field by Assistant Professor Joshua Grolman and Yifan Liao in the Technion’s Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and Assistant Professor Charles Diesendruck in the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry demonstrates a strategy for measuring mechanical forces in biological processes. The development is expected to accelerate, streamline, and reduce the cost of industrial polymer production processes by enabling measurements that were previously impossible.

In addition to biological applications, the scientists note in their research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that “the materials we have developed could turn many biological and artificial materials into sensors with exceptional sensitivity. They could also be used to coat aircraft components, providing alerts on emerging failures in these components.”

Their new technology, called Dip-conjugation, is based on mechanophores — molecular units that produce chemical or physical signals when subjected to structural changes, such as pressure or stretching. Measuring these signals provides information about the state of the material, which is significant for various biological processes that could not be monitored until now.

The advantage of Dip-conjugation is that it is applicable to both synthetic and natural materials. This includes materials made from proteins (high-tech fabrics like silk and wool, as well as proteins found in the human body) and carbohydrates (cellulose, lactose, starch, etc.).

Top photo, from left: Asst. Prof. Joshua Grolman, Yifan Liao, and Asst. Prof. Charles Diesendruck.