* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, September 7, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

    Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

    Pendulum Announce Homecoming 2026 Australian Tour – yahoo.com

    Pendulum Announces Thrilling Homecoming Tour Across Australia in 2026

    ITV Studios Launches New Entertainment Label – Global Bulletin – IMDb

    ITV Studios Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Label

    TS Entertainment bringing Malibu Jack’s to former Owensboro mall – Lane Report

    TS Entertainment Launches Malibu Jack’s at Former Owensboro Mall Location

    Jenny Han Dropped a Major ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg Revealing [SPOILER] – yahoo.com

    Jenny Han Just Unveiled a Huge ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg That Changes Everything [SPOILER]

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer With Emotional Song ‘Bones’ – yahoo.com

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer with Emotional New Song ‘Bones

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Coherent Joins LLNL’s STARFIRE Diode Technology Working Group to Advance Inertial Fusion Energy – GlobeNewswire

    Coherent Partners with LLNL’s STARFIRE Team to Drive Breakthroughs in Inertial Fusion Energy

    Gene Associated With Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers Identified – Technology Networks

    Breakthrough Discovery Uncovers Gene Behind Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers

    Monkey Island LNG Picks ConocoPhillips’ Liquefaction Technology – Hart Energy

    Monkey Island LNG Selects ConocoPhillips’ Advanced Liquefaction Technology for Next-Gen Energy Solutions

    Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. (CRDO) Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Estimates – Yahoo Finance

    Credo Technology Group Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Expectations

    The Economist is hiring a science and technology correspondent – The Economist

    Exciting Opportunity: Become Our Next Science and Technology Correspondent!

    Blockchain lender Figure Technology seeks to raise up to $526M in IPO (FIGR:Pending) – Seeking Alpha

    Blockchain Lender Figure Technology Sets Sights on $526M in Thrilling IPO Launch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

    Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

    Pendulum Announce Homecoming 2026 Australian Tour – yahoo.com

    Pendulum Announces Thrilling Homecoming Tour Across Australia in 2026

    ITV Studios Launches New Entertainment Label – Global Bulletin – IMDb

    ITV Studios Unveils Exciting New Entertainment Label

    TS Entertainment bringing Malibu Jack’s to former Owensboro mall – Lane Report

    TS Entertainment Launches Malibu Jack’s at Former Owensboro Mall Location

    Jenny Han Dropped a Major ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg Revealing [SPOILER] – yahoo.com

    Jenny Han Just Unveiled a Huge ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Easter Egg That Changes Everything [SPOILER]

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer With Emotional Song ‘Bones’ – yahoo.com

    Liam Payne’s Cousin Ross Harris Honors Late Singer with Emotional New Song ‘Bones

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Coherent Joins LLNL’s STARFIRE Diode Technology Working Group to Advance Inertial Fusion Energy – GlobeNewswire

    Coherent Partners with LLNL’s STARFIRE Team to Drive Breakthroughs in Inertial Fusion Energy

    Gene Associated With Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers Identified – Technology Networks

    Breakthrough Discovery Uncovers Gene Behind Deadly Heart Disease in Golden Retrievers

    Monkey Island LNG Picks ConocoPhillips’ Liquefaction Technology – Hart Energy

    Monkey Island LNG Selects ConocoPhillips’ Advanced Liquefaction Technology for Next-Gen Energy Solutions

    Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. (CRDO) Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Estimates – Yahoo Finance

    Credo Technology Group Surpasses Q1 Earnings and Revenue Expectations

    The Economist is hiring a science and technology correspondent – The Economist

    Exciting Opportunity: Become Our Next Science and Technology Correspondent!

    Blockchain lender Figure Technology seeks to raise up to $526M in IPO (FIGR:Pending) – Seeking Alpha

    Blockchain Lender Figure Technology Sets Sights on $526M in Thrilling IPO Launch

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Gel mat teaches muscle cells to collaborate

October 22, 2023
in Science
Gel mat teaches muscle cells to collaborate
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Exercise benefits our bodies by making our muscles more robust and more toned. But what’s the exact reason behind this?

While we exercise, our muscles receive signals from nearby cells and experience physical forces from moving against other tissues. Some researchers are curious: Is it the body’s natural chemicals that stimulate muscle growth, the physical motion itself, or perhaps a combination? Finding this answer could be crucial in developing treatments for muscle injuries and neurodegenerative conditions.

MIT engineers have created a unique exercise mat for cells that allows scientists to focus on the purely mechanical effects of exercise at a microscopic level.

This new design is similar to a yoga mat. However, it is made of hydrogel, a soft material similar to Jell-O. It’s about the size of a quarter and contains tiny magnetic particles.

Researchers use an external magnet beneath the mat to move these particles, causing the gel to wobble like a vibrating mat. They can adjust the wobbling frequency to simulate the forces muscles encounter during exercise.

They grew a layer of muscle cells on the gel and set the magnet in motion. Then, they observed how the cells responded to this ‘exercise’ created by the magnetic vibrations.

The initial findings show that consistent mechanical exercise can make muscle fibers grow in a coordinated direction. These aligned and ‘exercised’ fibers can contract together. This suggests that scientists can use the gel to guide the growth of muscle fibers. With this new tool, the team aims to create organized sheets of solid and functional muscles, which could be used in soft robots or for repairing damaged tissues.

Ritu Raman, the Brit and Alex d’Arbeloff Career Development Professor in Engineering Design at MIT, said, “We hope to use this new platform to see whether mechanical stimulation could help guide muscle regrowth after injury or lessen the effects of aging. Mechanical forces play a vital role in our bodies and our environment. And now we have a tool to study that.”

At MIT, Dr. Raman’s lab focuses on creating adaptive living materials for medical and robotic applications. They’re building functional neuromuscular systems to restore mobility in people with motor disorders and power flexible robots. To better understand how natural muscles work, her team is studying how muscle tissues respond to different forces, especially exercise, at the cellular level.

The challenge was to separate the two main aspects of exercise—chemical and mechanical—to see how muscles react solely to mechanical forces. They needed a method to expose muscle cells to repetitive mechanical forces without harming them. Their solution was to use magnets, which are safe and don’t cause damage, to generate these mechanical forces.

The researchers made tiny magnetic bars for their prototype by mixing magnetic particles with a rubbery silicone solution. They then formed a slab from this mixture and sliced it into thin bars. Four magnetic bars were placed between two hydrogel layers, a material commonly used for growing muscle cells. The resulting mat, embedded with magnets, was about the size of a quarter.

They then grew a cluster of muscle cells on this mat, which started as round shapes and gradually stretched and merged with neighboring cells to form fibers.

Next, the researchers placed a magnet beneath the gel mat and moved it back and forth. This caused the embedded magnets to wobble the gel, creating forces similar to those experienced during exercise by cells. They mechanically ‘exercised’ the cells for 30 minutes daily over ten days. In a control group, cells were grown on the same mat but were not exercised.

When examining the gel after this period, they noticed distinct differences between the mechanically stimulated and control cells.

The researchers found that muscle cells exposed to regular mechanical motion grew longer and formed aligned fibers when compared to cells that weren’t exercised. In contrast, non-exercised cells remained circular and had a disorganized structure.

The muscle cells used in the study were genetically modified to contract when exposed to blue light, as simulating them electrically could harm the cells. When blue light was shone on these cells, the control cells had a haphazard contraction pattern, while the exercised cells contracted uniformly in the same direction.

The new gel, named ‘MagMA’ (Magnetic Matrix Actuation), offers a noninvasive way to shape muscle fibers and explore their response to exercise. The researchers plan to use this gel for studying other cell types and their response to mechanical stimulation.

The study introduces a novel approach to encourage muscle cells to align and coordinate their growth using a wobbly gel mat. This innovative method has the potential to be applied in muscle tissue engineering and understanding the impact of mechanical forces on cell behavior.

Journal reference:

Brandon Rios, Angel Bu, et al., Mechanically programming anisotropy in engineered muscle with actuating extracellular matrices. Device. DOI: 10.1016/j.device.2023.100097.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Tech Explorist – https://www.techexplorist.com/gel-mat-teaches-muscle-cells-collaborate/75989/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gel-mat-teaches-muscle-cells-collaborate

Tags: Musclescienceteaches
Previous Post

Most detailed underground images to date of the Long Valley Caldera

Next Post

Using deep learning to generate 3D holograms from 2D images

Trump’s Economy Fails Arkansans as Unemployment Reaches Four-Year High – SWARK Today

Trump’s Economy Fails Arkansans as Unemployment Reaches Four-Year High – SWARK Today

September 7, 2025
Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

September 7, 2025
Heroes on the Hill event addresses mental health for vets, first responders – CBS News

Heroes on the Hill: Tackling Mental Health Challenges for Vets and First Responders

September 7, 2025

Trump signs executive order creating ‘state sponsor of wrongful detention’ designation – CNN

September 7, 2025
Ecology issues $738K penalty against downtown Walla Walla Chevron owner – Union-Bulletin

Ecology issues $738K penalty against downtown Walla Walla Chevron owner – Union-Bulletin

September 6, 2025
What the science says about acetaminophen, pregnant mothers and autism – NBC News

What the science says about acetaminophen, pregnant mothers and autism – NBC News

September 6, 2025
RFK Jr accused of ‘reckless disregard for science and the truth’ in Senate hearing – The Guardian

RFK Jr. Faces Fierce Backlash for ‘Reckless Disregard for Science and Truth’ in Heated Senate Hearing

September 6, 2025
Start The Go-Go Years Today: Ignite Your Early Retirement Lifestyle – Forbes

Start The Go-Go Years Today: Ignite Your Early Retirement Lifestyle – Forbes

September 6, 2025
When Sports Teach More Than Skills – American Enterprise Institute

When Sports Teach More Than Skills – American Enterprise Institute

September 6, 2025
Abby Dow and England near record territory as Australia search for upset – The Guardian

Abby Dow and England Close in on Record as Australia Hunts for an Upset

September 6, 2025

Categories

Archives

September 2025
MTWTFSS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930 
« Aug    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (810)
  • Economy (829)
  • Entertainment (21,706)
  • General (16,892)
  • Health (9,870)
  • Lifestyle (841)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (830)
  • Politics (835)
  • Science (16,039)
  • Sports (21,327)
  • Technology (15,808)
  • World (809)

Recent News

Trump’s Economy Fails Arkansans as Unemployment Reaches Four-Year High – SWARK Today

Trump’s Economy Fails Arkansans as Unemployment Reaches Four-Year High – SWARK Today

September 7, 2025
Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

Victor Garber on his viral “And Just Like That” toilet scene: ‘I was delighted to be doing something ridiculous’ (exclusive) – yahoo.com

September 7, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version