Related papers: Probing embryonic tissue mechanics with laser hole…
The question of what guides lineage segregation is central to development, where cellular differentiation leads to segregated cell populations destined for specialized functions. Here, using optical tweezers measurements of mouse embryonic…
One of the central problems in animal and plant developmental biology is deciphering how chemical and mechanical signals interact within a tissue to produce organs of defined size, shape and function. Cell walls in plants impose a unique…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
The spongy mesophyll is a complex, porous tissue found in plant leaves that enables carbon capture and provides mechanical stability. Unlike many other biological tissues, which remain confluent throughout development, the spongy mesophyll…
Cell-cell contacts in tissues are continuously subject to mechanical forces due to homeostatic pressure and active cytoskeleton dynamics. While much is known about the molecular pathways of adhesion, the role of mechanics is less well…
The embryos of the green alga $Volvox~carteri$ are spherical sheets of cells that turn themselves inside out at the close of their development through a programme of cell shape changes. This process of inversion is a model for morphogenetic…
We investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of adherent cells characterized by a highly anisotropic actin cytoskeleton. Using a combination of theoretical work and experiments on micropillar arrays, we demonstrate that the…
During the life of animals, epithelial tissues undergo extensive deformations--first to form organs during embryogensis and later to preserve integrity and function in adulthood. To what extent these deformations resemble that of non-living…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
Mechanical stress plays an intricate role in gene expression in individual cells and sculpting of developing tissues. However, systematic methods of studying how mechanical stress and feedback help to harmonize cellular activities within a…
The maintenance of the proliferative cell niche is critical to epithelial tissue morphology and function. In this paper we investigate how current modelling methods can result in the erroneous loss of proliferative cells from the…
The hygro-mechanical behavior of a hierarchical cellular material, i.e. growth rings of softwood is investigated using a two-scale micro-mechanics model based on a computational homogenization technique. The lower scale considers the…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
Embryonic healing in epithelial tissues is distinct from adult wound healing, as it lacks inflammatory responses or immune cell recruitments, making it ideal to test models of wound healing driven primarily by epithelial dynamics. Many…
The mechanics of epithelial tissues, which is governed by forces generated in various cell domains, is often investigated using two-dimensional models that account for the apically-positioned actomyosin structures but neglect basolateral…
Epithelial spreading is a common and fundamental aspect of various developmental and disease-related processes such as epithelial closure and wound healing. A key challenge for epithelial tissues undergoing spreading is to increase their…
During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…
Amorphous materials exhibit complex material proprteties with strongly nonlinear behaviors. Below a yield stress they behave as plastic solids, while they start to yield above a critical stress $\Sigma_c$. A key quantity controlling…