Related papers: Structural characterization and statistical-mechan…
The mechanical properties of tissues play an essential role for all tissue properties such as cell division, and differentiation or morphogenesis. Here, we study theoretically the rheology of 2-dimensional epithelial tissues described by a…
We investigate morphologies of proliferating cellular tissue using a newly developed numerical simulation model for mechanical cell division. The model reproduces structures of simple multi-cellular organisms via simple rules for selective…
Measurements on embryonic epithelial tissues in a diverse range of organisms have shown that the statistics of cell neighbor numbers are universal in tissues where cell proliferation is the primary cell activity. Highly simplified…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
Epithelia are confluent cell layers that self-organize into polygonal networks whose geometry encodes their mechanical state. A principal driver is the tunable contractility of the actomyosin cortex, which links cell-junction tension to…
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…
We investigate the statistical properties of two dimensional random cellular systems (froths) in term of their shell structure. The froth is analyzed as a system of concentric layers of cells around a given central cell. We derive exact…
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…
During the life of animals, epithelial tissues undergo extensive deformations--first to form organs during embryogensis and later to preserve integrity and function in adulthood. To what extent these deformations resemble that of non-living…
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…
Many morphogenetic processes involve mechanical rearrangement of epithelial tissues that is driven by precisely regulated cytoskeletal forces and cell adhesion. The mechanical state of the cell and intercellular adhesion are not only the…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
Within developing embryos, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as short as minutes. This includes epithelial tissues, which often narrow and elongate in convergent extension movements due to anisotropies in external…
Shape transformations of epithelial tissues in three dimensions, which are crucial for embryonic development or in vitro organoid growth, can result from active forces generated within the cytoskeleton of the epithelial cells. How the…
A continuum model of epithelial tissue mechanics was formulated using cellular-level mechanical ingredients and cell morphogenetic processes, including cellular shape changes and cellular rearrangements. This model can include finite…
As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively, whereas variation of shape from cell-to-cell is dismissed most…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
Different cell types aggregate and sort into hierarchical architectures during the formation of animal tissues. The resulting spatial organization depends (in part) on the strength of adhesion of one cell type to itself relative to other…
Epithelial morphogenesis, a signature problem of tissue biology and tissue mechanics, continues to inspire biologists and physicists alike. Many treatments focus on tissue fluidization, apical/basal ratio changes, or mechanical…
Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…