Elastic fibers provide tissues with elasticity which is critical to the function of arteries, lungs, skin, and other dynamic organs. Loss of elasticity is a major contributing factor in aging and diseases. However, the mechanism of elastic fiber development and assembly is poorly understood. Here, we show that lack of fibulin-4, an extracellular matrix molecule, abolishes elastogenesis. fibulin...

In this study, conventional restorative glass ionomer cement (GIC) was modified by embedding it with mechanically processed cellulose fibers. Two concentrations of fibers were weighed and agglutinated into the GIC during manipulation, yielding Experimental Groups 2 (G2; 3.62 wt% of fibers) and 3 (G3; 7.24 wt% of fibers), which were compared against a control group containing no fibers (G1). The...

Eruptive collagenoma is an acquired connective tissue nevus without family history. It is typically described as numerous small papules or nodules on the trunk and arms with histopathological features of decreased or degenerated elastic fibers. We report a case of a 16-year-old male who presented with multiple asymptomatic 2 to 5 mm sized yellowish grouped papules on the left calf. Histopatholo...

OBJECTIVE Compare detrusor muscle of normal and patients with infravesical obstruction, quantifying the collagen and elastic system fibers. MATERIALS AND METHODS We studied samples taken from bladders of 10 patients whose ages ranged from 45 to 75 years (mean = 60 years), who underwent transvesical prostatectomy for treatment of BPH. Control material was composed of 10 vesical specimens, remo...

The concentrically-layered photonic structure found in the tropical fruit Margaritaria nobilis serves as inspiration for photonic fibers with mechanically tunable band-gap. The fibers show the spectral filtering capabilities of a planar Bragg stack while the microscopic curvature decreases the strong directional chromaticity associated with flat multilayers. Elongation of the elastic fibers res...

Recent experimental advances for the fabrication of various borophene sheets introduced new structures with a wide range of applications. Borophene is the boron atom analogue of graphene. Borophene exhibits various structural polymorphs all of which are metallic. In this work, we employed first-principles density functional theory calculations to investigate the mechanical properties of five di...