Related papers: Quantifying stretching and rearrangement in epithe…

Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…

Cell shape has long been used to discern cell phenotypes and states, but the underlying premise has not been quantitatively tested. Here, we show that a single cell image can be used to discriminate its migration behavior by analyzing a…

Collective cell migration in cohesive units is vital for tissue morphogenesis, wound repair, and immune response. While the fundamental driving forces for collective cell motion stem from contractile and protrusive activities of individual…

The combination of protrusions and retractions in the movement of polarized cells leads to understand the effect of possible synchronisation between the two ends of the cells. This synchronisation, in turn, could lead to different dynamics…

In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…

We study theoretically and numerically how hard frictionless particles in random packings can rearrange. We demonstrate the existence of two distinct unstable non-linear modes of rearrangement, both associated with the opening and the…

Recent work on particle-based models of tissues has suggested that any finite rate of cell division and cell death is sufficient to fluidize an epithelial tissue. At the same time, experimental evidence has indicated the existence of glassy…

Experiments show that when a monolayer of cells cultured on an elastic substrate is subject to a cyclic stretch, cells tend to re-orient either perpendicularly or at an oblique angle with respect to the main direction of the stretch. Due to…

Local rearrangements are the elements of plastic deformation in an amorphous solid. In oscillatory shear, they can switch reversibly between two distinct configurations. While these repeating relaxations are typically considered in the…

Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…

Tumor cells invade individually or in groups, mediated by mechanical interactions between cells and their surrounding matrix. These multicellular dynamics are reminiscent of leader-follower coordination and epithelial-mesenchymal…

The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…

Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…

Crawling cell motility is vital to many biological processes such as wound healing and the immune response. Using a minimal model we investigate the effects of patterned substrate adhesiveness and biophysical cell parameters on the…

Topological defects provide a unifying language to describe how orientational order breaks down in active and living matter. Considering cells as elongated particles confluent, epithelial tissues can be interpreted as nematic fields and its…

Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…

During epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), epithelial cells change their morphology, disperse, and gain mesenchymal-like characteristics. Usually, cells are categorized into discrete cell types or states based on gene expression and…

Cell spreading requires a major reorganisation of the actin cytoskeleton, from a cortical structure to a lamellipodium where filaments are mostly parallel to the substrate. We propose a model inspired by the physics of nematic liquid…

Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…

We consider a free boundary model of epithelial cell migration with logistic growth and nonlinear diffusion induced by mechanical interactions. Using numerical simulations, phase plane and perturbation analysis, we find and analyse…