Related papers: Giant fluctuations and structural effects in a flo…

During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…

The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…

We characterize cell motion in experiments and show that the transition to collective motion in colonies of gliding bacterial cells confined to a monolayer appears through the organization of cells into larger moving clusters. Collective…

Collective cell migration is essential for a wide range of biological processes such as: morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer spreading. However, it is well known that migrating epithelial collectives frequently undergo jamming, stay…

The transition of an epithelial layer from a stationary, quiescent state to a highly migratory, dynamic state is required for wound healing, development, and regeneration. This transition, known as the unjamming transition (UJT), is…

Activity-mediated unjamming of a confluent glassy system is crucial for several biological processes, such as embryogenesis and cancer metastasis. During these processes, the cells progressively change their junction properties,…

Cell monolayers provide an interesting example of active matter, exhibiting a phase transition from a flowing to jammed state as they age. Here we report experiments and numerical simulations illustrating how a jammed cellular layer rapidly…

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…

The transition from monolayers to multilayered structures in bacterial colonies is a fundamental step in biofilm development. Observed across different morphotypes and species, this transition is triggered within freely growing bacterial…

Collective cell migration in epithelia relies on cell intercalation: a local remodelling of the cellular network that allows neighbouring cells to swap their positions. Unlike foams and passive cellular fluid, in epithelial intercalation…

We study the stress distribution profiles and the height and thickness fluctuations of lipid membranes in the tilted gel state by Monte Carlo simulations of a generic coarse-grained model for lipid membranes, which reproduces many known…

We consider the formation of finite-size domains in lipid bilayers consisting of saturated and hybrid lipids. First, we describe a monolayer model that includes a coupling between a compositional scalar field and a two-dimensional vectorial…

Monolayers of growing bacteria, confined within channel geometries, exhibit self-organization into a highly aligned laminar state along the axis of the channel. Although this phenomenon has been observed in experiments and simulations under…

We use a three-dimensional formulation of the cell vertex model to describe the mechanical properties of a confluent planar monolayer of prismatic cells. Treating cell height as a degree of freedom, we reduce the model to a two-dimensional…

Entangled states are ubiquitous amongst fibrous materials, whether naturally occurring (keratin, collagen, DNA) or synthetic (nanotube assemblies, elastane). A key mechanical characteristic of these systems is their ability to reorganise in…

The relationship between cell density and velocity is often assumed to be negative, reflecting crowding-induced suppression of movement. However, observations across systems reveal a more nuanced picture: while some emphasize contact…

We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…

The mean size of exponentially dividing E. coli cells cultured in different nutrient conditions is known to depend on the mean growth rate only. However, the joint fluctuations relating cell size, doubling time and individual growth rate…

Spatiotemporal patterns in multicellular systems are important to understanding tissue dynamics, for instance, during embryonic development and disease. Here, we use a multiphase field model to study numerically the behavior of a…

Control of cell proliferation is a fundamental aspect of tissue physiology central to morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer. Although many of the molecular genetic factors are now known, the system level regulation of growth is still…