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Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…
Continuum strain energy functions are developed for soft biological tissues that possess long fibrillar components. The treatment is based on the model of an elastica, which is our fine scale model, and is homogenized in a simple fashion to…
Photophoretic forces, several orders of magnitude stronger than radiation pressure, enable particle trapping at remarkably low optical intensities and have opened pathways to applications in aerosol science, free-space 3D volumetric…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
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…
Describing and measuring the elastic properties of cellular materials such as honeycombs and foams can be a difficult problem when the cell structure is disordered. This paper suggests that tracking the flow of forces through the material…
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…
Modern spatial microscopy has provided developmental biology with powerful research tools. However, the recent significant technological breakthroughs have inevitably led to technical "bottlenecks" for the application of the new procedures…
Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…
Photoelastic techniques have a long tradition in both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the stresses in granular materials. Over the last two decades, computational methods for reconstructing forces between particles from their…
The development of complex multicellular organisms from a single parent cell is a highly orchestrated process that cells conduct collectively without central guidance, creating intricate dynamic patterns essential for development and…
As an effective method to deliver external materials into biological cells, microinjection has been widely applied in the biomedical field. However, the cognition of cell mechanical property is still inadequate, which greatly limits 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…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
It is a standard exercise in mechanical engineering to infer the external forces and torques on a body from its static shape and known elastic properties. Here we apply this kind of analysis to distorted double-helical DNA in complexes with…
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…
Small magnetic particles placed in a relatively soft polymer (with elastic modulus E ~ 10-100 kPa) are magnetically soft elastomers. The external magnetic field acts on each particle which leads to microscopic deformation of the material…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
The modelling of heterogeneous and architected materials poses a significant challenge, demanding advanced homogenisation techniques. However, the complexity of this task can be considerably simplified through the application of micropolar…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…