Related papers: Relating cell shape and mechanical stress in a spa…
Multiphase field models have emerged as an important computational tool for understanding biological tissue while resolving single-cell properties. While they have successfully reproduced many experimentally observed behaviors of living…
The rheology of biological tissue is key to processes such as embryo development, wound healing and cancer metastasis. Vertex models of confluent tissue monolayers have uncovered a spontaneous liquid-solid transition tuned by cell shape;…
In tissue development, wound healing, and cancer invasion, coordinated cell motion arises from active forces produced by the cells. The relationship between force and motion remains unclear, however, because the forces result from a sum of…
When cell sheets fold during development, their apical or basal surfaces constrict and cell shapes approach the geometric singularity in which these surfaces vanish. Here, we reveal the mechanical consequences of this geometric singularity…
Cell shape is fundamental in biology. The average cell shape can influence crucial biological functions, such as cell fate and division orientation. But cell-to-cell shape variability is often regarded as noise. In contrast, recent works…
A phase-field model is used to capture the surfactant-driven formation of fracture patterns in particulate monolayers. The model is intended for the regime of closely-packed systems in which the mechanical response of the monolayer can be…
We have developed a novel scanning probe-based methodology to study cell biomechanics. The time dependence of the force exerted by the cell surface on a scanning probe at constant local deformation has been used to extract local…
The coordinated behaviors of epithelial cells are widely observed in tissue development, such as re-epithelialization, tumor growth, and morphogenesis. In these processes, cells either migrate collectively or organize themselves into…
Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require confluent cell monolayers/bulk tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cell shape alone can…
During embryonic development, structures with complex geometry can emerge from planar epithelial monolayers and to study these shape transitions is of key importance for revealing the biophysical laws involved in the morphogenesis of…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…
Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into separate regions, i.e., demix. Does the same phenomenon occur in confluent biological tissues? We begin to answer this question for epithelial…
In this work we derive the state of strain or stress under symmetry conserving conditions in pseudomorphic lattices with monoclinic symmetry. We compare surface vectors across the template epitaxial layer interface and impose conditions of…
The maintenance of tissue and organ structures during dynamic homeostasis is often not well understood. In order for a system to be stable, cell renewal, cell migration and cell death must be finely balanced. Moreover, a tissue's shape must…
Langmuir monolayers are advantageous systems used to investigate how lipid membranes get involved in the physiology of many living structures, such as collapse phenomena in alveolar structures. Much work focuses on characterizing the…
The cytoskeleton (CSK) plays an important role in many cell functions. Given the similarities between the mechanical behavior of tensegrity structures and the CSK, many studies have proposed different tensegrity-based models for simulating…
The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…
Using a three-dimensional active vertex model, we numerically study the shapes of strained unsupported epithelial monolayers subject to active junctional noise due to stochastic binding and unbinding of myosin. We find that while uniaxial,…
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.…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…