Dennis Discher and Andrea Liu (IRG1 and Seed) 
‘Living Smectics’ are being studied by a Physics PhD student, Stephanie Majkut, with Andrea Liu helping in theory.
- Elastic boundary conditions affect the Order and Organization of the living cytoskeleton.
- While the effect of boundary geometries on LC order have been widely studied for decades, the elasticity of the boundary has not been examined.
- Living LCs have been the subject of recent theories, and now have been extended to ‘smectic like’ Order in muscle cells.
- Equally important is the material inspiration such systems provide for synthetic LCs smectics, ‘active’ or ‘dead’, interacting with soft boundaries.
Stephanie Majkut, … Andrea Liu, Dennis Discher. Current Biology 2013