Vesicle proto-tissues
Giant vesicles coated with sticky molecules can be assembled into simple tissue-like materials, which are useful both in synthetic biology and as a clean model for tissue mechanics. We ask how the stickiness between vesicles, their size and the temperature set the viscoelasticity of such a proto-tissue. Vesicles carry DNA linkers that bind reversibly, and magnetic tweezers probe the material at the scale of a few vesicles, where the response follows a power law at short times. Statistical analysis shows that, despite large variability, the data fall into a simple low-dimensional space: the material is firmer with smaller vesicles, at lower temperature and with more linkers, while the length of the DNA sticky end matters little. The work is led by F. Riche and F. Basar, with Pietro Cicuta and Lorenzo Di Michele; the manuscript is in preparation.