WFU Special Physics Colloquium

TITLE: From Cilia to Silia: Biological and engineered fluid flows

SPEAKER: Professor Richard Superfine ,

TIME: Monday Feb. 11, 2008 at 2:00 PM ^*

PLACE: Olin 103
^*Note unusual time and place.

Beating cilia are responsible for fluid flows in biological systems from single cell organisms to essential functions of the human body including the lung, the reproductive system and the brain. In the lung, cilia propel a thin sheet of viscoelastic fluid, mucus, to clear infectious agents such as bacteria and other pathogens. Failure of mucus flows, such as occurs in conditions such as Cystic Fibrosis, can lead to severe infections. To understand mucus clearance and biological fluid flows, we are engaged in a research project that combines measurements of force generation in human lung epithelial cilia, measures of viscoelasticity of complex fluids such as mucus and measures of the flow within mucus layers above cell cultures. To model the system, we have a community of researchers in the Virtual Lung Project that is developing a predictive computational model of the mucus clearance system. This includes computational models of cilia and structure-fluid interactions. In parallel, we have developed engineered versions of sheets of cilia in a ferroelastomer that we actuate with magnetic fields. The resulting fluid flow is being used to benchmark the computational models in their eventual application to biology, and may have further technological applications.