Related papers: Determining physical properties of the cell cortex
The mechanical integrity of arteries is of prime importance, for a proper oxygen and nutrients delivery to all organs. To optimize their mechanical properties, healthy arteries exhibit a complex hierarchical microstructure which ensures a…
Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…
Biological functions rely on ordered structures and intricately controlled collective dynamics. In contrast to systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, order is typically established and sustained in stationary states by continuous dissipation…
Eukaryotic cells can move spontaneously without being guided by external cues. For such spontaneous movements, a variety of different modes have been observed, including the amoeboid-like locomotion with protrusion of multiple pseudopods,…
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a floating lipid bilayer membrane coupled with a two-dimensional cytoskeleton network, taking into explicitly account the intermonolayer friction, the discrete lattice structure of the…
Molecular diffusion measurements are widely used to probe microstructure in materials and living organisms noninvasively. The precise relation of diffusion metrics to microstructure remains a major challenge: In complex samples, it is often…
Using active gel theory we study theoretically the properties of the cortical actin layer of animal cells. The cortical layer is described as a non-equilibrium wetting film on the cell membrane. The actin density is approximately constant…
The actin cortex is an active biopolymer network underneath the plasma membrane at the periphery of mammalian cells. It is a major regulator of cell shape through the generation of active cortical tension. In addition, the cortex…
Collagen fibres play an important role in the mechanical behaviour of many soft tissues. Modelling of such tissues now often incorporates a collagen fibre distribution. However, the availability of accurate structural data has so far lagged…
We propose a two-scale model to resolve essential features of developmental tissue deformations. The model couples individual cellular behavior to the mechanics at tissue scale. This is realized by a multiphase-field model addressing the…
We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…
Cell monolayers and epithelial tissues display slow dynamics during the liquid-glass transitions, a phenomenon with direct relevance to embryogenesis, tumor metastases, and wound healing. In active cells, persistent motion and cell…
Recent experiments in various cell types have shown that two-dimensional tissues often display local nematic order, with evidence of extensile stresses manifest in the dynamics of topological defects. Using a mesoscopic model where tissue…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
The cytoskeleton relies on diverse populations of motors, filaments, and binding proteins acting in concert to enable non-equilibrium processes ranging from mitosis to chemotaxis. Its versatile reconfigurability, programmed by interactions…
We model the elasticity of the cerebral cortex as a layered material with bending energy along the layers and elastic energy between them in both planar and polar geometries. The cortex is also subjected to axons pulling from the underlying…
Quantifying entropy production in various active matter phases will open new avenues for probing self-organization principles in these far-from-equilibrium systems. It has been hypothesized that the dissipation of free energy by active…
The cell cortex, a thin film of active material assembled below the cell membrane, plays a key role in cellular symmetry breaking processes such as cell polarity establishment and cell division. Here, we present a minimal model of the…
Axon radius is a potential biomarker for brain diseases and a crucial tissue microstructure parameter that determines the speed of action potentials. Diffusion MRI (dMRI) allows non-invasive estimation of axon radius, but accurately…
Mechanical properties of the cell are important biomarkers for probing its architectural changes caused by cellular processes and/or pathologies. The development of microfluidic technologies have enabled measuring cell mechanics at…