Yan Feng (UNC-CH), GMA Seminar

Title: Reduced modeling of cell mechanics

Abstract: As can be discerned by the brief overview above of the current state of experimental and computational techniques, there is considerable scope at present to provide quantitative links between atomistic scales and biological functions at the level of an entire cell. There exists a need for well-defined mathematical constructs to carry out this research. In the real biological context, once the overall mechanical behavior of the cell is investigated, the biomolecular system is too large to be tacked with the standard all-atom models even atomic coarse-grained (CG) models. Hence, there is a strong need for model reduction techniques to reduce the computational costs and storage requirements. In this research, model reduction by the implementation of principal orthogonal decomposition (POD) applied with normal modes analysis(NMA) enables the computation of the collective motions of large-scale dynamic system. A continuum model, which can be considered as a macroscale representation of coarse-graining, is constructed based on knowledge of the structural fluctuations obtained by atomic CG model simulations. This continuum model further is implemented with finite element method(FEM), which is used in computing the mechanical properties of the cells responding to biomechanical stimuli at the cell level.