Related papers: Substrate rigidity deforms and polarizes active ge…

We present a rotationally invariant viscous vertex model that accounts for both cortical and bulk dissipation of cells. The vanishing substrate-friction limit is enforced via Lagrange multipliers, which also provides a framework for…

Motivated by the formation of ring-like filament structures in the cortex of plant and animal cells, we study the dynamics of a two-dimensional layer of cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins near a surface by a general continuum theory.…

A consistent treatment of the coupling of surface energy and elasticity within the multi-phase- field framework is presented. The model accurately reproduces stress distribution in a number of analytically tractable, yet non-trivial, cases…

Wetting phenomena are relevant in several technological applications, particularly those involving hydrophobic or hydrophilic surfaces. Many substrates support multiple wetting states depending on surface conditions or droplet history, a…

How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…

Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…

The origin of rigidity in disordered materials is an outstanding open problem in statistical physics. Previously, a class of 2D cellular models has been shown to undergo a rigidity transition controlled by a mechanical parameter that…

We investigate the dynamical coupling between the motion and the deformation of a single self-propelled domain based on two different model systems in two dimensions. One is represented by the set of ordinary differential equations for the…

The organization of live cells to tissues is associated with the mechanical interaction between cells, which is mediated through their elastic environment. We model cells as spherical active force dipoles surrounded by an infinite elastic…

Solid interfaces have intrinsic elasticity. However, in most experiments, this is obscured by bulk stresses. Through microscopic observations of the contact-line geometry of a partially wetting droplet on an anisotropically stretched…

The formation and destabilisation of viscoelastic filaments are of importance in many industrial and biological processes. Filament instabilities have been observed for viscoelastic fluids but recently also for soft elastic solids. In this…

The equilibrium state of a flexible fiber settling in a viscous fluid is examined using a combination of macroscopic experiments, numerical simulations and scaling arguments. We identify three regimes having different signatures on this…

Cellularized tissue and polymer networks can both transition from floppy to rigid as a function of their control parameters, and, yet, the two systems often mechanically interact, which may affect their respective rigidities. To study this…

Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…

Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…

We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…

We develop a general continuum mechanics framework for active anisotropic plates within the F\"oppl-von K\'arm\'an limit, incorporating a preferential direction and inelastic active contractions in geometrically nonlinear plate theory.…

An analytical model based on variational principles for a thin-walled stiffened plate subjected to axial compression is presented. A system of nonlinear differential and integral equations is derived and solved using numerical continuation.…

The interplay between active matter and its environment is central to understanding emergent behavior in biological and synthetic systems. Here, we show that coupling active nematic flows to small-amplitude deformations of a compliant…

Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…