Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Riga 2026

Active and Responsive Soft Matter: From Biological to Engineered Systems

Wednesday Speaker Abstracts

INSECT ANTENNAE AS INSPIRATIONAL SELF-HEALING FIBER-BASED MICROFLUIDICS Konstantin Kornev 1 ; 1 Clemson University, Materials Science & Engineering, Clemson, SC, USA Nerves in animals are protected from damage by special organismal constructs that are flexible enough to withstand the low forces during running, jumping or other everyday movements, but cannot withstand extreme forces or impacts. There are some exemptions when either the whole animal or its individual organs use extreme forces in their favor and withstand them without damaging nerves. Insect antennae are among the special organs subject to severe loading conditions. Many insects use antennae for fencing, boxing and drumming, sometimes hitting the enemy more than ten times per second. Fighting, these insects engage mandibles (“jaws”) to break up antennae. It remains enigmatic how the nerves can remain functional and continue to support the organism with the necessary information after extreme bending, twisting, stretching, compression, or strong impacts, or mandible punctures. These blood-filled, muscle-free fiber-like organs consist of a rigid cuticular shell that houses tracheae and nerve cords running along the antennae. In this lecture, I will discuss key experiments using X-ray imaging, optical microscopy, nanorheology and modeling to reveal the important microfluidic features of insect antennae. Insect physiology textbooks describe blood circulation through the antennae as the means of supplying nutrients and removing waste products. We revealed its important role in antennal movement and self-healing. A comparative study of the antennae of cockroaches, longhorned beetles, stick insects, and hawkmoths demonstrates an intriguing coupling between hemodynamics and antennal deformation. In insects vulnerable to dehydration, the mechanistic reaction of blood after antenna wounding is rapid. In a few seconds, the Newtonian, low viscosity blood turns into a non-Newtonian, viscoelastic fluid, allowing insects to minimize blood loss by sealing the wound and forming primary clots. These new biophysical insights into insect antennae call for integrating neuromechanics with multiscale fiber-based fluidics.This work was partially supported by USA NSF grant IOS 2017289.

IT TAKES THREE, AT LEAST, TO RAISE A CELLULAR FAMILY M. Taher A. Saif 1 ; 1 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

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