Related papers: Soft yet sharp interfaces in a vertex model of con…
In dense biological tissues, cell types performing different roles remain segregated by maintaining sharp interfaces. To better understand the mechanisms for such sharp compartmentalization, we study the effect of an imposed heterotypic…
The properties of tissue interfaces -- between separate populations of cells, or between a group of cells and its environment -- has attracted intense theoretical, computational, and experimental study. Recent work on shape-based models…
Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
Cross-sections of cell shapes in a tissue monolayer typically resemble a tiling of convex polygons. Yet, examples exist where the polygons are not convex with curved cell-cell interfaces, as seen in the adaxial epidermis. To date,…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
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…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…
Soft elastic filaments that can be stretched, bent and twisted exhibit a range of topologically and geometrically complex morphologies that include plectonemes, solenoids, knot-like and braid-like structures. We combine numerical…
Interfaces in tissues are ubiquitous, both between tissue and environment as well as between populations of different cell types. The propagation of an interface can be driven mechanically. % e.g. by a difference in the respective…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
Soft interfaces can mediate interactions between particles bound to them. The force transmitted through the surface geometry on a particle may be expressed as a closed line integral of the surface stress tensor around that particle. This…
Cell neighbor exchanges play a critical role in regulating tissue fluidity during epithelial morphogenesis and repair. In vivo, these neighbor exchanges are often hindered by the formation of transiently stable four-fold vertices, which can…
The Vertex Model for epithelia models the apical surface of the tissue by a tiling, with polygons representing cells and edges representing cell-cell junctions. The mechanics are described by an energy governed by deviations from a target…
The growth of several biological tissues is known to be controlled in part by local geometrical features, such as the curvature of the tissue interface. This control leads to changes in tissue shape that in turn can affect the tissue's…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…