Related papers: Shape regulation generates elastic interaction bet…

Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…

We introduce a dissipative particle dynamics scheme for the dynamics of non-ideal fluids. Given a free-energy density that determines the thermodynamics of the system, we derive consistent conservative forces. The use of these effective,…

The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…

Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…

Throughout developmental biology and ecology, transport can be driven by nonlocal interactions. Examples include cells that migrate based on contact with pseudopodia extended from other cells, and animals that move based on their vision of…

The dynamics of spherical particles driven along an interface between two immiscible fluids is investigated asymptotically. Under the assumptions of a pinned three-phase contact line and very different viscosities of the two fluids, a…

The long-range electrostatic interactions between molecules depend strongly on their relative orientation, which manifests as a rotational state dependence. Interactions between molecules in the same rotational quantum state are well-known…

Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…

A two-dimensional system of particles with tunable repulsive interactions is experimentally investigated. Soft ferromagnetic particles are placed on a vibrating rough plate and vertically confined, so that they perform a horizontal Brownian…

Uncovering the rules governing the nonequilibrium dynamics of the membranes that define biological cells is of central importance to understanding the physics of living systems. We theoretically and computationally investigate the behavior…

Inspired by dense contractile tissues, where cells are subject to periodic deformation, we formulate and study a generic hydrodynamic theory of pulsating active liquids. Combining mechanical and phenomenological arguments, we postulate that…

Epithelial tissues play a fundamental role in various morphogenetic events during development and early embryogenesis. Although epithelial monolayers are often modeled as two-dimensional (2D) elastic surfaces, they distinguish themselves…

Developing tissues often maintain mechanical coherence while continuously remodeling through cellular processes such as cell divisions and rearrangements. In this way, they are an example of amorphous solids. In passive amorphous solids,…

A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…

The vertex model is widely used to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues, because of its simplicity and versatility and the direct inclusion of biophysical parameters. Here, it is shown that quite generally, when cells modify their…

Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…

Cell motility is one of the most fundamental phenomena underlying biological processes that maintain living organisms alive. Here we introduce a simple model to describe the motility of cells which include not only time-correlated internal…

Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…

Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…

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…