Related papers: Glassy dynamics in three-dimensional embryonic tis…
A theoretical model for stratified epithelium is presented. The viscoelastic properties of the tissue is assumed to be dependent on the spatial distribution of proliferative and differentiated cells. Based on this assumption, a hydrodynamic…
The physics of how molecules, organelles, and foreign objects move within living cells has been extensively studied in organisms ranging from bacteria to human cells. In mammalian cells, in particular, cellular vesicles move across the cell…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
We present a model for glassy dynamics in supercooled liquid mixtures. Given the relaxation behavior of individual supercooled liquids, the model predicts the relaxation times of their mixtures as temperature is decreased. The model is…
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…
Understanding the structural dynamics of many-particle glassy systems remains a key challenge in statistical physics. Over the last decade, glassy dynamics has also been reported in biological tissues, but is far from being understood. It…
During epithelial wound healing, cell morphology near the healed wound and the healing rate vary strongly among different developmental stages even for a single species like \textit{Drosophila}. We develop deformable particle (DP) model…
Glassy systems are disordered systems characterized by extremely slow dynamics. Examples are supercooled liquids, whose dynamics slow down under cooling. The specific pattern of slowing-down depends on the material considered. This…
By characterizing the dynamics of idealized lattice models with a tunable kinetic constraint, we explore the different ways in which dynamical facilitation manifests itself within the local dynamics of glassy materials. Dynamical…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
The dynamics of cellular pattern formation is crucial for understanding embryonic development and tissue morphogenesis. Recent studies have shown that human dermal fibroblasts cultured on liquid crystal elastomers can exhibit an increase in…
Epithelial cell tissues have a slow relaxation dynamics resembling that of supercooled liquids. Yet, they also have distinguishing features. These include an extended short-time sub-diffusive transient, as observed in some experiments and…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Signatures of glassy dynamics have been identified experimentally for a rich variety of materials in which molecular networks provide rigidity. Here we present a theoretical framework to study the glassy behavior of both passive and active…
The mechanical behaviour of solid biological tissues has long been described using models based on classical continuum mechanics. However, the classical continuum theories of elasticity and viscoelasticity cannot easily capture the…
We propose a dynamical theory of low-temperature shear deformation in amorphous solids. Our analysis is based on molecular-dynamics simulations of a two-dimensional, two-component noncrystalline system. These numerical simulations reveal…
We present numerical simulations of a model of cellulose consisting of long stiff rods, representing cellulose microfibrils, connected by stretchable crosslinks, representing xyloglucan molecules, hydrogen bonded to the microfibrils. Within…
Recent experiments have revealed that cytoplasms become glassy when their metabolism is suppressed, while they maintain fluidity in a living state. The mechanism of this active fluidization is not clear, especially for bacterial cytoplasms,…
Cell neighbor exchanges are integral to tissue rearrangements in biology, including development and repair. Often these processes occur via topological T1 transitions analogous to those observed in foams, grains and colloids. However, in…
Here we introduce a variation of the trap model of glasses based on softness, a local structural variable identified by machine learning, in supercooled liquids. Softness is a particle-based quantity that reflects the local structural…