Journal Article

Designing allostery-inspired response in mechanical networks

Rocks, Jason W., Pashine, Nidhi, Liu, Andrea J., Nagel, Sidney R., Bischofberger, Irmgard, Goodrich, Carl P.

2017

Overview

Recent advances in designing metamaterials have demonstrated that global mechanical properties of disordered spring networks can be tuned by selectively modifying only a small subset of bonds. Here, using a computationally efficient approach, we extend this idea to tune more general properties of networks. With nearly complete success, we are able to produce a strain between any two target nodes in a network in response to an applied source strain on any other pair of nodes by removing only ∼1% of the bonds. We are also able to control multiple pairs of target nodes, each with a different individual response, from a single source, and to tune multiple independent source/target responses simultaneously into a network. We have fabricated physical networks in macroscopic 2D and 3D systems that exhibit these responses. This work is inspired by the long-range coupled conformational changes that constitute allosteric function in proteins. The fact that allostery is a common means for regulation in biological molecules suggests that it is a relatively easy property to develop through evolution. In analogy, our results show that long-range coupled mechanical responses are similarly easy to achieve in disordered networks.

• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Subject: allostery / ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS / Biomechanics / Chemical bonds / CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY / disordered networks / MATERIALS SCIENCE / MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING / mechanical metamaterials / Molecular biology / Physical Sciences / Physics / Proteins / Strain rate / Stress response / Three dimensional imaging / tunable response