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The tendon-to-bone attachment

Unification through disarray

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High-resolution imaging, composition analysis and mechanical testing reveal a disordered transitional material within the Achilles tendon-to-bone attachment, structured as a fibrous network to enable force transfer and maximize structural integrity.

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Figure 1: The hierarchical structure of the tendon-to-bone attachment.
Figure 2: The random, fibrous nature of the tendon-to-bone attachment endows it with toughness while protecting tendon and bone.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, and the Department of Neurological Surgery at Washington University in St Louis, Guy Genin is at the Bioinspired Engineering and Biomechanics Center (BEBC), the Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering, Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Missouri 63130, USA,

    Guy M. Genin

  2. Stavros Thomopoulos is in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, New York 10032, USA,

    Stavros Thomopoulos

Authors
  1. Guy M. Genin
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  2. Stavros Thomopoulos
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Correspondence to Guy M. Genin or Stavros Thomopoulos.

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Genin, G., Thomopoulos, S. Unification through disarray. Nature Mater 16, 607–608 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4906

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