The NATO Advanced Study Institute on Biomechanics of Active Movement and Division of Cells was held September 19-29, 1993 in Istanbul and the Proceedings are presented in this volume. Sixty-eight scientists from sixteen countries attended. Prof. J. Bereiter-Hahn of Goethe-Universitat, Frankfurt, Germany, Prof. A.K. Harris of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, Prof. R.M. Nerem of Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA and Prof. R. Skalak of the University of California, San Diego, USA were the members of the International Organizing Committee. As the Scientific Director of the Institute, I wish to express my sincere appreciation for their assistance without which the Institute could not have taken place. This Institute is the third one of the meetings which are now called "the NATO Istanbul Meetings on Cytomechanics". The first one was the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Biomechanics of Cell Division which was held October 12-17, 1986 in Istanbul. The Proceedings were published as NATO ASI Series A Life Sciences Vol. 132 by Plenum Press in 1987. The second one was the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Biomechanics of Active Movement and Deformation of Cells which was held September 3-13, 1989 in Istanbul. The Proceedings were published as NATO ASI Series H : Cell Biology Vol. 42 by Springer-Verlag in 1990.

Cytomechanics is the application of the classical principles of mechanics in cell biology. It is an applied science concerned with the description and evaluation of mechanical properties of cells and their organelles as well as of the forces exerted by them. Thus, this topic needs a truly interdisciplinary approach, and accordingly this volume gives an up-to-date account of the current research done on cell division, mitosis, cytokinesis, cell locomotion and cell deformation during normal development and the cytoskeletal role in cell shape. Biologists, biomechanicians, biophysicists, biochemists and biomathematicians here discuss the basic concepts of mechanics and thermodynamics, emphasizing their applicability to cell activities.

Using simple models this book shows how we can gain insights into the behavior of complex systems. It is devoted to the discussion of functional self-organization in large populations of interacting active elements. The authors have chosen a series of models from physics, biochemistry, biology, sociology and economics, and systematically discuss their general properties. The book addresses researchers and graduate students in a variety of disciplines.

Cell mechanics and cellular engineering may be defined as the application of principles and methods of engineering and life sciences toward fundamental understanding of structure-function relationships in normal and pathological cells and the development of biological substitutes to restore cellular functions. This definition is derived from one developed for tissue engineering at a 1988 NSF workshop. The reader of this volume will see the definition being applied and stretched to study cell and tissue structure-function relationships. The best way to define a field is really to let the investigators describe their areas of study. Perhaps cell mechanics could be compartmentalized by remembering how some of the earliest thinkers wrote about the effects of mechanics on growth. As early as 1638, Galileo hypothesized that gravity and of living mechanical forces place limits on the growth and architecture organisms. It seems only fitting that Robert Hooke, who gave us Hooke's law of elasticity, also gave us the word "cell" in his 1665 text, Micrographid, to designate these elementary entities of life. Julius Wolffs 1899 treatise on the function and form of the trabecular architecture provided an incisive example of the relationship between the structure of the body and the mechanical load it bears. In 1917, D' Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form revolutionized the analysis of biological processes by introducing cogent physical explanations of the relationships between the structure and function of cells and organisms.

This book covers the fundamentals of biomechanics. Topics include bio solids, biofluids, stress, balance and equilibrium. Students are encouraged to contextualize principles and exercises within a “big picture” of biomechanics. This is an ideal book for undergraduate students with interests in biomedical engineering.

An interdisciplinary study explaining the dynamics underlying biological motion – one of the most obvious expressions of self-organization. Designed for a broad audience from bioscientists to applied mathematicians, this book considers possible synergetic mechanisms of interaction and cooperation on different microscopic levels.

For anybody capable of an emotional response to it, any view of a developing organism should give birth to a feeling of amazement and even admiration, whether this development is seen directly, or in the form of a time lapse film, or even if mentally reconstructed from a series of static images. We ask ourselves how such seemingly primitive eggs or pieces of tissue, without any obvious intervention from outside, so regularly transform themselves into precisely constructed adult organisms. If we try to formulate what amazes us most of all about development, the answer will probably be that it is the internal capacity of developing organisms themselves to create new structures. How, then, can we satisfy our amazement in ways that are more or less reasonable, as well as scientifically valuable? This depends, first of all, on what position we choose to regard embryonic development as occupying among other structure creating processes, even including human activities. On the one hand, one might regard the development of organisms as a highly specialized class of processes, unique to themselves and alien to the general laws of nature, or at least not derivable from them and more akin to the deliberate acts of our own human behaviour. In that case our task would become reduced to a search for some specific 'instructions' for each next member of such a class. Whether in an overt or hidden form, some such ideology seems to dominate in present day developmental biology.