BME Seminar
Friday, February 7th, 2020
UTEB 150 at Storrs & Videoconferenced to UCHC CG-079B
12:00-1:00 pm
“A Multi-Scale Model of Elastin: Insights into Assembly, Mechanics and Interactions with the ECM”
Presented By: Anna Tarakanova, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus
Abstract: Elastin is the dominant building block of elastic fibers in the extracellular matrix that impart structural integrity and elasticity to a range of important tissues, including the lungs, blood vessels and the skin. The elastin polymer is assembled from its molecular precursor tropoelastin. Historically, elastin’s dynamic nature has precluded traditional approaches such as X-ray crystallography to understand its detailed features. Here, I describe recent work using atomistic and coarse-grained models for predicting elastin’s atomistic structure, self-assembly, mechanics and dynamic interactions with other components of elastic fibers. We use the models to probe the function of key molecular regions, investigate disease etiology and explore implications for hierarchical assembly. We also study single-molecule mechanics of elastin to explain mechanisms of elastin’s superb elasticity. And, we find that self-assembly of monomers generates ~70 nm dense aggregates that are distinct at different temperatures, displaying high temperature sensitivity. The results suggest that the coalescence of tropoelastin assemblies into higher-order structures may be reinforced in the initial stages of coacervation by directed assembly, supporting the experimentally observed presence of heterogeneous crosslinking. The models provide a framework to characterize elastin mechanics, assembly, and disease, yielding insights into molecular mechanisms behind these processes.
Biography: Dr Anna Tarakanova joined the University of Connecticut in 2018 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. Her research focuses on advancing molecular and multiscale modeling methods to study the structure, function and mechanics of biological and bioinspired materials driving the development of new functional materials for medical and engineering applications. Additionally, she investigates new characterization approaches for highly disordered molecules, their associated functions and implications for health and disease. Her work aims to expose disease mechanisms from a fundamental scale into structural and functional hierarchies associated with complex biological systems. She received her B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (2011), and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2015 and 2017, respectively), followed by a one-year appointment as a postdoctoral scholar also at MIT.
For more information, contact: Wendy S Vanden Berg-Foels at wendyv@engr.uconn.edu