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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…
A new kinetic model for the dynamics of myxobacteria colonies on flat surfaces is derived formally, and first analytical and numerical results are presented. The model is based on the assumption of hard binary collisions of two different…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
The shape of nanocrystals is crucial in determining their surface area, reactivity, optical properties, mechanical strength, and self-assembly behavior. Traditionally, shape control has been achieved through empirical methods, highlighting…
Biological membranes are shaped by various proteins that either generate inward or outward membrane curvature. In this article, we investigate the membrane morphologies induced by mixtures of arc-shaped particles with coarse-grained…
When a ribbon or tube is twisted far enough it forms buckles and wrinkles. Its new geometry can be strikingly ordered, or hopelessly disordered. Here we study this process in a tube with hybrid boundary conditions: one end a cylinder, and…
Spontaneous growth of long-wavelength deformations is a defining feature of active fluids with orientational order. We investigate the effect of biaxial rectangular confinement on the instability of initially shear-aligned 3D isotropic…
We introduce a formalism for the geometry of eukaryotic cells and organisms.Cells are taken to be star-convex with good biological reason. This allows for a convenient description of their extent in space as well as all manner of cell…
We consider a free boundary problem for a system of PDEs, modeling the growth of a biological tissue. A morphogen, controlling volume growth, is produced by specific cells and then diffused and absorbed throughout the domain. The geometric…
We present a systematic study of the influence of cell geometry on the orientational distribution of microtubules (MTs) nucleated from a single microtubule organizing center (MTOC). For simplicity we consider an elliptical cell geometry, a…
Growing monolayers of rod-shaped bacteria exhibit local alignment similar to extensile active nematics. When confined in a channel or growing inward from a ring, the local nematic order of these monolayers changes to a global ordering with…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
A dynamic self-organized morphology is the hallmark of network-shaped organisms like slime moulds and fungi. Organisms continuously re-organize their flexible, undifferentiated body plans to forage for food. Among these organisms the slime…
Bacterial colonies growing on surfaces are shaped by mechanical stresses transmitted through the community, governed by the balance between cell growth and steric and cell-substrate interactions. Using overdamped dynamics simulations of…
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
The deformation of thin rods in a viscous liquid is central to the mechanics of motility in cells ranging from \textit{Escherichia coli} to sperm. Here we use experiments and theory to study the shape transition of a flexible rod rotating…
The ability of cells to undergo reversible shape changes is often crucial to their survival. For Red Blood Cells (RBCs), irreversible alteration of the cell shape and flexibility often causes anemia. Here we show theoretically that RBCs may…
Proteins control many vital functions in living cells, such as cell growth and cell division. Reliable coordination of these functions requires the spatial and temporal organizaton of proteins inside cells, which encodes information about…
Can topography be used to control bacteria accumulation? We address this question in the model system of smooth-swimming and run-and-tumble \textit{Escherichia coli} swimming near a sinusoidal surface, and show that the accumulation of…
Branching morphogenesis generates epithelial trees which facilitate gas exchange, filtering, as well as secretion processes with their large surface to volume ratio. In this review, we focus on the developmental mechanisms that control the…