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The cell cortex is a thin layer beneath the plasma membrane that gives animal cells mechanical resistance and drives most of their shape changes, from migration, division to multicellular morphogenesis. It is mainly composed of actin…
We formulate a nonlinear continuum model of a graphene sheet supported by a flat rigid substrate. The sheet is parallel to the substrate and loaded on a pair of opposite edges. A typical cross-section of the sheet is modeled as an elastica.…
Within mean-field theory we study wetting of elastic substrates. Our analysis is based on a grand canonical free energy functional of the fluid number density and of the substrate displacement field. The substrate is described in terms of…
A thin flat rectangular plate supported on its edges and subjected to in-plane loading exhibits stable post-buckling behaviour. However, the introduction of a nonlinear (softening) elastic foundation may cause the response to become…
A combination of cellular contractility and active phase separation in cell-matrix composites is thought to be an enabler of spatiotemporal patterning in multicellular tissues across scales, from somitogenesis to cartilage condensation. To…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of the…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
The patterns arising from the differential swelling of gels are investigated experimentally and theoretically as a model for the differential growth of living tissues. Two geometries are considered: a thin strip of soft gel clamped to a…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
The detachment dynamics of a fluid membrane with an isotropic spontaneous curvature from a flat substrate are studied by using meshless membrane simulations. The membrane is detached from an open edge leading to vesicle formation. With…
We report an instability exhibited by a fluid system when coupling two distinct types of waves, both linearly damped. While none of them is unstable on its own, they amplify one another, resulting in a previously unreported convective…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Recent experimental observations have suggested that topological defects can facilitate the creation of sharp features in developing embryos. Whereas these observations echo established knowledge about the interplay between geometry and…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
During animal development and homeostasis, the structure of tissues, including muscles, blood vessels and connective tissues adapts to mechanical strains in the extracellular matrix (ECM). These strains originate from the differential…
Actin flow in the cortical cytoskeleton underneath the cell membrane generates mechanical stresses that shape the cell surface. We study this mechanism using a hydrodynamic model of a compressible active gel polymerizing at the membrane and…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of liquid-crystalline material confined to a nanoscopic slit-pore. The simulations are carried out under isothermal conditions in a specialized isostress ensemble in which N fluid molecules are exposed to…
We study the viscoelasticity of an active solution of polar biofilaments and motor proteins. Using a molecular model, we derive the constitutive equations for the stress tensor in the isotropic phase and in phases with liquid crystalline…
The dynamic of contact formation between soft materials immersed in a fluid is accompanied by fluid drainage and elastic deformation. As a result, controlling the coupling between lubrication pressure and elasticity provides strategies to…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…