Stability of biological liquids under tension

We witness metastable liquids at considerable negative pressures in numerous biological and technological settings, such as lithotripsy, sonoporation, catapulting mechanisms of fern spores, and in plants. In the latter, negative pressure is used to transport water from the soil to the leaves. Yet, water under tension is vulnerable to cavitation, i.e., the spontaneous formation of rapidly expanding voids or gas bubbles, which can spread and result in a fatal embolism. How exactly plants manage to transport water under negative pressure remains one of the biggest conundrums in biophysics up to this day. It has been suggested that pure water is remarkably resilient to cavitation, but the fragile components are other accompanying elements of soft- and biomatter, particularly hydrocarbons. They are the ones representing the weakest link in the stability of aqueous systems and setting the limit of the system's stability under tension. In this theoretically-based research project, we propose to study this vastly unexplored area of aqueous soft-matter systems under tension. We intend to illuminate essential aspects of whether and how lipids can stabilize systems under tension, as has been recently hypothesized. We will employ molecular dynamics simulation techniques supported by theoretical analysis. Recently, we developed a simulation method that is suitable to study cavitation. The research will address several questions related to different lipids formations. We will examine lipid coatings on different surfaces and how stable they are against cavitation at negative pressures. Furthermore, we will explore the formation of lipid-coated nanobubbles under negative pressure and analyze their stability. The results will not have an impact only on soft-matter physics and botany but on many other disciplines such as material science, fluidics, and engineering as well.