B.Sc., M.Sc. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (64,66) Ph.D., Univ. of California, La Jolla (70) NSF-NATO Post-doctoral Fell., Paris (71--72) Senior Scientist Award, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (87) Associate, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (91-- )
Biological materials are usually grouped into "soft" (cartilage, tendon, skin) and "hard" tissue categories (mineralized composites like bone and shell). These materials are strongly bonded and fabricated through well designed chemical pathways. By comparison, another category of biological material is "ultrasoft": the membrane capsules of cells and organelli. Here, the microstructure is susceptible to thermal fluctuations and geometric arrangements (phases) are often separated by only weak thermal energy barriers. The material structure is labile and seems unlikely to possess durable properties. However, nature has successfully developed methods to strengthen and maintain ultrasoft cell structures well beyond human technical capabilities. Unraveling the mysteries of these designs is likely to provide significant advances in soft material technologies and insights into the physics of complex processes in biology.
Soft Organic Interfaces
Most biological activity and function emanates from chemical and physical processes at soft interfaces of membranes and other flexible structures. The general objectives of research in my laboratory are to expose the underlying physical mechanisms used by nature in design of complex organisms and to derive insights for condensed matter physics from study of biological interfaces. Studies are focussed on elasticity and dynamics of synthetic and natural membranes, adhesion of soft organic interfaces and cellular organisms, chemical-mechanical energy transduction (e.g. in cell locomotion), etc.
Yeung, A. and Evans, E. Unexpected Dynamics in Shape Fluctuations of Bilayer Vesicles. J. Phys. II (France) 5:1501-1523, 1995.
Evans, E., Bowman, H., Leung, A., Needham, D. and tirrell, D. Biomembran Templates for Nanoscale Conduits and Networks. Science 273: 933-935, 1996.
Evans, E., Kllingenberg, D.J. and Szoka, F. Interactions between Polymer Grafted Membranes in Concentrated Solutions of Free Polymer. Langmuir 12: 3031-3037, 1996.
Parsegian, V.A. and Evans, E.A. Long and Short Range Intermolecular and Intercolloidal Forces. Curr. Opin, In Coll. and Surf. Sci. 1: 53-60, 1996.
Evans, E. and Rawixz, W., Elasticity of Fuzzy Biomembranes. Phys. Rev. Lett. (in press).
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