Related papers: Embryo as an active granular fluid: stress-coordin…
The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…
The transport of active particles may occur in complex environments, in which it emerges from the interplay between the mobility of the active components and the quenched disorder of the environment. Here we explore structural and dynamical…
The evolution of the internal granular structure in shear-arrested and shear-flowing states of granular materials is characterized using fabric tensors as descriptors of the internal contact and force networks. When a dilute system of…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
Previous work introduced a lower-dimensional numerical model for the geometric nonlinear simulation and optimization of compliant pressure actuated cellular structures. This model takes into account hinge eccentricities as well as…
We propose a coarse-grained theoretical model to capture the aging of microfluidic devices under different conditions including constant applied flow rate and constant applied pressure gradient. Microfluidic devices that sort cells by their…
Active gels perform key mechanical roles inside the cell, such as cell division, motion and force sensing. The unique mechanical properties required to perform such functions arise from the interactions between molecular motors and…
A model is proposed to study the process of hypoxia-induced angiogenesis in cancer cells. The model accounts for the role played by the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A in regulating the oxygen intake. VEGF-A is dynamically…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…
The form of the stress tensor is investigated in smooth, dense granular flows which are generated in split-bottom shear geometries. We find that, within a fluctuation fluidized spatial region, the form of the stress tensor is directly…
Living active collectives have evolved with remarkable self-patterning ability to meet the physical and biological constraints for growth and survival. However, how complex multicellular patterns emerge from a single founder cell remains…
The concentration gradient of the Bicoid morphogen, which is established during the early stages of a Drosophila melanogaster embryonic development, determines the differential spatial patterns of gene expression and subsequent cell fate…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
Active fluids, such as cytoskeletal filaments, bacterial colonies and epithelial cell layers, exhibit distinctive orientational coherence, often characterized by nematic order and topological defects. By contrast, little is known about…
Active Brownian particles (ABPs) function as self-driving agents that display non-equilibrium behavior through their pairwise interactions which lead to phase separation and vortex patterns in both soft matter and living systems. A…
Dry active matter systems are well-known to exhibit Motility-Induced Phase Separation (MIPS). However, in wet active systems, attractive hydrodynamic interactions mediated by active particles stalled at a boundary can introduce…
Atherosclerosis is characterised by the growth of fatty plaques in the inner (intimal) layer of the artery wall. In mature plaques, vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) are recruited from the adjacent medial layer to deposit a cap of fibrous…
Stress induced yielding/fluidization in disordered solids, characterized by irreversibility and enhanced dissipation, is important for a wide range of industrial and geological processes. Although, such phenomena in thermal systems have…
Machine-learned coarse-grained (CG) models have the potential for simulating large molecular complexes beyond what is possible with atomistic molecular dynamics. However, training accurate CG models remains a challenge. A widely used…
Active matter physics and swarm robotics have provided powerful tools for the study and control of ensembles driven by internal sources. At the macroscale, controlling swarms typically utilizes significant memory, processing power, and…