Related papers: Emergence of Function
During embryonic development tissue morphogenesis and signaling are tightly coupled. It is therefore important to simulate both tissue morphogenesis and signaling simultaneously in in silico models of developmental processes. The resolution…
Convergent extension of epithelial tissue is a key motif of animal morphogenesis. On a coarse scale, cell motion resembles laminar fluid flow; yet in contrast to a fluid, epithelial cells adhere to each other and maintain the tissue layer…
Biological systems across various length and time scales are noisy, including tissues. Why are biological tissues inherently chaotic? Does heterogeneity play a role in determining the physiology and pathology of tissues? How do physical and…
Development combines three basic processes asymmetric --- cell division, signaling and gene regulation --- in a multitude of ways to create an overwhelming diversity of multicellular life-forms. Here, we attempt to chart this diversity…
Multicellular tissues are the building blocks of many biological systems and organs. These tissues are not static, but dynamically change over time. Even if the overall structure remains the same there is a turnover of cells within the…
A novel mechanism for cell differentiation is proposed, based on the dynamic clustering in a globally coupled chaotic system. A simple model with metabolic reaction, active transport of chemicals from media, and cell division is found to…
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
Swarming or collective motion of living entities is one of the most common and spectacular manifestations of living systems having been extensively studied in recent years. A number of general principles have been established. 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…
Investigations of natural variation in cell mechanics within a cell population are essential to understand the stochastic nature of soft-network deformation. Striking commonalities have been found concerning the average values and…
Tissue dynamics play a crucial role in biological processes ranging from inflammation to morphogenesis. However, these noisy multicellular dynamics are notoriously hard to predict. Here, we introduce a biomimetic machine learning framework…
During embryonic morphogenesis, tissues undergo dramatic deformations in order to form functional organs. Similarly, in adult animals, living cells and tissues are continually subjected to forces and deformations. Therefore, the success of…
Although tissues are usually studied in isolation, this situation rarely occurs in biology, as cells, tissues, and organs, coexist and interact across scales to determine both shape and function. Here, we take a quantitative approach…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…
Cell mechanical properties are fundamental to the organism but remain poorly understood. We report a comprehensive phenomenological framework for the nonlinear rheology of single fibroblast cells: a superposition of elastic stiffening and…
Active cell-junction remodeling is important for tissue morphogenesis, yet its underlying physics is not understood. We study a mechanical model that describes junctions as dynamic active force dipoles. Their instability can trigger cell…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
Trying to identify the entropy production within a cell has been part of debates and studies in the last century. First the idea was to make a resemblance of a cell with a Carnot engine, which is the most thermodynamically perfect machine.…
The mechanical properties within living cells play a critical role in the adaptive regulation of their biological functions upon environmental and internal stimuli. While these properties exhibit nonequilibrium dynamics due to the thermal…