Related papers: Force localization in contracting cell layers
Networks of elastic fibers are ubiquitous in biological systems and often provide mechanical stability to cells and tissues. Fiber reinforced materials are also common in technology. An important characteristic of such materials is their…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
Photoelasticity is employed to investigate the stress state near stiff rectangular and rhombohedral inclusions embedded in a 'soft' elastic plate. Results show that the singular stress field predicted by the linear elastic solution for the…
Tissue engineering aims to grow artificial tissues \emph{in vitro} to replace those in the body that have been damaged through age, trauma or disease. A recent approach to engineer artificial cartilage involves seeding cells within a…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback from the…
Correlated velocity patterns and associated large length-scale transmission of traction forces have been observed in collective live cell migration as a response to a "wound". We argue that a simple physical model of a force-driven…
The mechanical response of biological soft tissues is influenced by wall heterogeneity, including spatial variations in wall thickness. Traditional models for homogeneous soft tissues under uniaxial loading predict higher stretch and stress…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
Within developing embryos, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as short as minutes. This includes epithelial tissues, which often narrow and elongate in convergent extension movements due to anisotropies in external…
Cellular rearrangements, as primary sources of tissue fluidization, facilitate topological transitions during tissue morphogenesis. We study the role of intrinsic cell properties such as cell polarity and cell-cell adhesion in shaping…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…
The rigidity of elastic networks depends sensitively on their internal connectivity and the nature of the interactions between constituents. Particles interacting via central forces undergo a zero-temperature rigidity-percolation transition…
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…
Collective cell migration in epithelia relies on cell intercalation: a local remodelling of the cellular network that allows neighbouring cells to swap their positions. Unlike foams and passive cellular fluid, in epithelial intercalation…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
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…
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…
The response to a localized force provides a sensitive test for different models of stress transmission in granular solids. The elasto-plastic models traditionally used by engineers have been challenged by theoretical and experimental…