Related papers: Soft yet sharp interfaces in a vertex model of con…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
Network equilibrium models represent a versatile tool for the analysis of interconnected objects and their relationships. They have been widely employed in both science and engineering to study the behavior of complex systems under various…
Epithelial tissues act as barriers and, therefore, must repair themselves, respond to environmental changes and grow without compromising their integrity. Consequently, they exhibit complex viscoelastic rheological behavior where…
We measure different contributions to entropy production in a living functional epithelial tissue. We do this by extracting the functional dynamics of development while at the same time quantifying fluctuations. Using the translucent…
Biological cells can exchange messages through soluble molecules or membrane-bound receptors. In particular in the latter case, the interaction is usually located in specific regions of the interacting cells and may depend on or induce…
The macroscopic behaviour of active matter arises from nonequilibrium microscopic processes. In soft materials, active stresses typically drive macroscopic shape changes, which in turn alter the geometry constraining the microscopic…
We study the structure and dynamics of the interface separating a passive fluid from a microtubule-based active fluid. Turbulent-like active flows power giant interfacial fluctuations, which exhibit pronounced asymmetry between regions of…
We develop a computational method for simulating the nonlinear dynamics of an elastic tumor-host interface. This work is motivated by the recent linear stability analysis of a two-phase tumor model with an elastic membrane interface in 2D.…
We investigate fracture toughness of architected interfaces and their ability to maintain structural integrity and provide stable damage propagation conditions beyond the failure load. We propose theoretical and numerical frameworks to…
We derive a continuum mechanical model to capture the morphological changes occurring at the pretumoral stage of epithelial tissues. The proposed model aims to investigate the competition between the bulk elasticity of the epithelium and…
The elastic and adhesive properties of a solid surface can be quantified by indenting it with a rigid sphere. Indentation tests are classically described by the JKR-law when the solid is very stiff, while recent work highlights the…
Cell-based, mathematical modeling of collective cell behavior has become a prominent tool in developmental biology. Cell-based models represent individual cells as single particles or as sets of interconnected particles, and predict the…
Macroscopic properties and shapes of biological tissues depend on the remodelling of cell-cell junctions at the microscopic scale. We propose a theoretical framework that couples a vertex model of solid confluent tissues with the dynamics…
There is a growing need for soft robotic platforms that perform gentle, precise handling of a wide variety of objects. Existing surface-based manipulation systems, however, lack the compliance and tactile feedback needed for delicate…
We study the dependence of the surface tension of a fluid interface on the density profile of a third suspended phase. By means of an approximated model for the binary mixture and of a perturbative approach we derive close formulas for the…
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…
The vertex model of epithelia describes the apical surface of a tissue as a tiling of polygonal cells, with a mechanical energy governed by deviations in cell shape from preferred, or target, area, $A_0$, and perimeter, $P_0$. The model…
The flows of tissues of epithelial cells often involve T1 transitions. These neighbour exchanges are irreversible rearrangements crossing an energy barrier. Here, by an exact geometric construction, I determine this energy barrier for…
It is important to understand the coordinated performance of cells in tissue. One possible mechanism in this coordination involves intracellular calcium signaling. The topology of intercellular connections in tissue should also play an…