Membrane Biomechanics

Irena Levitan, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received her PhD in Biophysics and Neurobiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1994 and completed postdoctoral training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Institute for Medicine and Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the biophysical properties of endothelial membranes and sub-membrane cytoskeleton. Specifically, the studies of her group, which combine computational and experimental biophysical approaches, provided the first comprehensive structural insights into cholesterol regulation of K+ channels. In 2012, she was named a Guyton Distinguished Lecturer “for her quantitative and biophysical work on cholesterol modulation of ion channels and how this can affect integrated organ function”. She and her group also discovered a paradoxical relationship between fluidity/deformability of the membrane and cell stiffness. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of AIMBE for “outstanding contributions to our understanding of lipid-ion channel interactions, cellular biomechanics and vascular dysfunction under dyslipidemia”. Andreea Trache is at Texas A&M University, USA

1. Lipid bilayers: Phase behavior and nanomechanics

Lorena Redondo-Morata, Patricia Losada-Pérez and Marina Inés Giannotti

2. Membrane modulatory effects of omega-3 fatty acids: Analysis of molecular level interactions

Brendan C. Bunker, Jordan L. De Groot and Manuela A.A. Ayee

3. Cell membrane mechanics and mechanosensory transduction

Boris Martinac, Yury A. Nikolaev, Giulia Silvani, Navid Bavi, Valentin Romanov, Yoshitaka Nakayama, Adam D. Martinac, Paul Rohde, Omid Bavi and Charles D. Cox

4. Mechanics of the cell: Interaction mechanisms and mechanobiological models

Caleb Liebman, Andrew McColloch, Manoochehr Rabiei, Alan Bowling and Michael Cho

5. Mechanisms of endothelial stiffening in dyslipidemia and aging: Oxidized lipids and shear stress

Liz Le Master, Sang Joon Ahn and Irena Levitan

6. Vascular smooth muscle stiffness and its role in aging

Andreea Trache, Michael P. Massett and Christopher R. Woodman

7. Mechanobiology of microvesicle release, uptake, and microvesicle-mediated activation

Samantha C. Schwager and Cynthia A. Reinhart-King

8. The interplay of membrane cholesterol and substrate on vascular smooth muscle biomechanics

Hanna J. Sanyour, Alex P. Rickel and Zhongkui Hong

9. Roles of microglial membranes in Alzheimer's disease

Jae-Won Shin and James C. Lee