The squid mantle is a complex structure which, in conjunction with a highly sensitive sensory system, provides squid with a wide variety of highly controlled movements. This article presents a model describing systems of collagen fibers that give the mantle its shape and mechanical properties. The validity of the model is verified by comparing predicted optimal fiber angles to actual fiber angl...

Multiple attributes of the three-dimensional (3D) extracellular matrix (ECM) have been independently implicated as regulators of cell motility, including pore size, crosslink density, structural organization, and stiffness. However, these parameters cannot be independently varied within a complex 3D ECM protein network. We present an integrated, quantitative study of these parameters across a b...

The arterial wall consists of three major microstructural components, collagen, elastin, and smooth muscle cells; all of which play important roles in the cardiovascular function of health and disease. From a biomechanical perspective, collagen with its high tensile strength constitutes the most important component, endowing the arterial wall with strength and load resistance. Changes in the me...

This is a descriptive study of tendon pathology with different structural appearances of repair tissue correlated to immunolocalization of cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP) and type I and III collagens and expression of COMP mRNA. The material consists of nine tendons from seven horses (5-25 years old; mean age of 10 years) with clinical tendinopathy and three normal tendons from horse...

A multiscale formulation is derived for the mechanics of a dilute fiber network microstructure, as occurs in in vitro reconstituted collagen gels, to accommodate the deterministic solution of a uniform-stress condition in the fiber network. The macroscale two-phase equations are derived based on the integral volume-averaging approach of the spatial averaging theorem, modified for the averaging ...

This paper presents a computational modeling study of the effects of the collagen fiber structure on the mechanical response of the sclera and the adjacent optic nerve head (ONH). A specimen-specific inverse finite element method was developed to determine the material properties of two human sclera subjected to full-field inflation experiments. A distributed fiber model was applied to describe...

PURPOSE To compare the effect of preserving sclera samples in either 95% ethanol or freeze-dried. METHODS Ninety-six samples of human sclera were studied. Half of them were freeze-dried and half preserved in 95% ethanol. Preservation periods of 18, 45, 90 or 174 days were studied. Automated immunostaining was carried out in the Ventana BenchMarkR LT platform using collagen 1 and fibronectin a...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131814.].

The arterial wall consists of three major microstructural components, collagen, elastin, and smooth muscle cells; all of which play important roles in the cardiovascular function of health and disease. From a biomechanical perspective, collagen with its high tensile strength constitutes the most important component, endowing the arterial wall with strength and load resistance. Changes in the me...

It has long been recognized that the high tensile strength of collagen is due to formation of intermolecular cross-links within the fiber. Following identification of the first of these intermolecular divalent cross-links in 1968 (Bailey and Peach, 1968), several other divalent and multivalent crosslinks have been proposed. Some of these proposed crosslinks have not stood the test of time, subs...