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It has been proposed that during the early steps in the origin of life, small droplets could have formed via the segregation of molecules from complex mixtures by phase separation. These droplets could have provided chemical reaction…
In many adult tissues, stem cells and differentiated cells are not homogeneously distributed : stem cells are arranged in periodic "niches", and differentiated cells are constantly produced and migrate out of these niches. In this article,…
We develop a simple computational model for cell boundary evolution in plastic deformation. We study the cell boundary size distribution and cell boundary misorientation distribution that experimentally have been found to have scaling forms…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
Probably the most fundamental processes for biological systems is their ability to create themselves through the use of cell division and cell differentiation. In this work a simple physical model is proposed for biological cell division.…
In this paper, based on the numerical calculation of total energy utilizing the Green's function method, we found that the external electric field applied to a microparticle-suspended nematic liquid crystal cell, if reaching a critical…
We propose a continuum theory of the liquid-liquid phase separation in an elastic network where phase-separated microscopic droplets rich in one fluid component can form as an interplay of fluids mixing, droplet nucleation, network…
A theoretical analysis is presented of a nematic liquid crystal confined between substrates pat- terned with squares that promote vertical and planar alignment. Two approaches are used to eluci- date the behavior across a wide range of…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
The organization of the axonal cytoskeleton is a key determinant of the normal function of an axon, which is a long thin projection away from a neuron. Under normal conditions two axonal cytoskeletal polymers microtubules and neurofilaments…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
Understanding to what extent stem cell potential is a cell-intrinsic property, or an emergent behavior coming from global tissue dynamics and geometry, is a key outstanding question of systems and stem cell biology. Here, we propose a…
We investigate the stability of a circular electrodes-coated dielectric membrane under the combined action of an electric field and all-round in-plane tension. It is known that such a membrane is susceptible to the limiting point…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
So-called polar liquid crystals possess spontaneous long-range mutual orientation of their electric dipole moments, conferring bulk polarity to fluid phases of matter. The combination of polarity and fluidity leads to complex phase…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
The biaxial phase in nematic liquid crystals has been elusive for several decades after its prediction in the 1970s. A recent experimental breakthrough was achieved by Liu et al. [PNAS 113, 10479 (2016)] in a liquid crystalline medium with…
Molecular anisotropy plays an important role in the glass transition of a liquid. Recently, a novel bulk glass state has been discovered by optical microscopy experiments on suspensions of ellipsoidal colloids. 'Liquid glass' is a…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…