Related papers: Polymorphism and bistability in adherent cells
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
The performance of bio-inspired fibrillar adhesives can be compromised by surface roughness, manufacturing imperfections or impurities. Previous studies investigated the cases of distributed defects on the array, and defects at the level of…
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…
Active nematic models explain the topological defects and flow patterns observed in epithelial tissues, but the nature of active stress-whether it is extensile or contractile, a key parameter of the theory-is not well established…
Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…
The adhesion of microcapsules to an attractive contact potential is studied theoretically. The axisymmetric shape equations are solved numerically. Beyond a universal threshold strength of the potential, the contact radius increases like a…
The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…
Adhesion plays an integral role in diverse biological functions ranging from cellular transport to tissue development. Estimation of adhesion strength, therefore, becomes important to gain biophysical insight into these phenomena. In this…
Rod-like bacteria maintain their cylindrical shapes with remarkable precision during growth. However, they are also capable to adapt their shapes to external forces and constraints, for example by growing into narrow or curved confinements.…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…
We address the folding induced by differential growth in soft layered solids via an elementary model that consists of a soft growing neo-Hookean elastic layer adhered to a deep elastic substrate. As the layer/substrate modulus ratio is…
We introduce a particle-based model of self-replicating cells on a deformable substrate composed of the dermis and the basement membrane and investigate the relationship between dermal deformations and stem cell pattering on it. We show…
A model describing cell membranes as optimal shapes with regard to the $L^2$-deficit of their mean curvature to a given constant called spontaneous curvature is considered. It is shown that the corresponding energy functional is lower…
Bacteria often form surface-bound communities, embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix, called biofilms. Quantitative studies of their growth have typically focused on unconfined expansion above solid or semi-solid surfaces,…
We study interactions between biological cells that apply anisotropic active mechanical forces on an elastic substrate. We model the cells as thin discs that along their perimeters apply radial, but angle-dependent forces on the substrate.…
We introduce a general theoretical framework to study the shape dynamics of actively growing and remodeling surfaces. Using this framework we develop a physical model for growing bacterial cell walls and study the interplay of cell shape…
The apparently intractable shape of a fold in a compressed elastic film lying on a fluid substrate is found to have an exact solution. Such systems buckle at a nonzero wavevector set by the bending stiffness of the film and the weight of…
The two pillars of Algebraic topology - Homology and homotopy theory rely on the availability of basic building blocks called cells. Cells take the form of simplexes, and have properties such as faces, sub-cells, convexity and…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Contractile forces exerted on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) lead to the alignment and stretching of constituent fibers within the vicinity of cells. As a consequence, the matrix reorganizes to form thick bundles of aligned…