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Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
When treated with antibiotics below the minimum inhibitory concentration, bacterial cell division turns off, but cell growth does not. Thus, rod-like bacteria, including E. coli, can elongate many times their length without increasing their…
The intricate wobbling motion of flagellated bacteria, characterized by the periodic precession of the cell body, is a determinant factor in their motility and navigation within complex fluid environments. While well-studied in quiescent…
Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
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…
Size-dependence of plastic flow is studied by discrete dislocation dynamical simulation of systems with various numbers of interacting linear edge dislocations while the stress is slowly increased. Regions between avalanches in the…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
Tubular crystals, two-dimensional lattices wrapped into cylindrical topologies, arise in many contexts, including botany and biofilaments, and in physical systems such as carbon nanotubes. The geometrical principles of botanical…
We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…
Uncovering the rules governing the nonequilibrium dynamics of the membranes that define biological cells is of central importance to understanding the physics of living systems. We theoretically and computationally investigate the behavior…
This paper theoretically analyzes a phenomenological stochastic model for bacterial growth. This model comprises cell division and the linear growth of cells, where growth rates and cell cycles are drawn from lognormal distributions. We…
We report the simultaneous characterization of time- and force-dependent mechanical properties of adherent cells in the physiologically relevant regime of large forces. We used magnetic tweezers to apply forces to magnetic beads bound to…
A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…
A polycrystalline solid is modelled as an ensemble of random irregular polyhedra filling the entire space occupied by the solid body, leaving no voids or flaws between them. Adjacent grains can slide with a relative velocity proportional to…
Controlling and suppressing bacterial accumulation at solid surfaces is essential for preventing biofilm formation and biofouling. Whereas various chemical surface treatments are known to reduce cell accumulation and attachment, the role of…
Bacteria tightly regulate and coordinate the various events in their cell cycles to duplicate themselves accurately and to control their cell sizes. Growth of Escherichia coli, in particular, follows a relation known as Schaechter 's growth…
Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into separate regions, i.e., demix. Does the same phenomenon occur in confluent biological tissues? We begin to answer this question for epithelial…
Many bacterial species are helical in form, including the widespread pathogen H. pylori. Motivated by recent experiments on H. pylori showing that cell wall synthesis is not uniform, we investigate the possible formation of helical cell…