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Optomechanical actuator nanoparticles collapse upon illumination with near-infrared light. Appropriately coated, they can be used to mechanically trigger cellular processes such as focal adhesion formation or T cell activation.
Measuring the forces generated by cells is not trivial in materials that behave in a nonlinear fashion. An equation that captures this behavior and finite-element modeling can be used to derive these forces from the material deformations around cells.
Researchers develop an approach based on solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study the structure of an intrinsically disordered protein under near-native conditions.
Functional magnetic resonance data are traditionally analyzed on a population level, but new work shows that meaningful information can be extracted from individual subjects.
Assessing papers that report (or use) computational methods is demanding for referees, but peer review of these methods and related software is crucial for biological research.