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Self-organisation of individuals within large collectives occurs throughout biology. Mathematical models can help elucidate the individual-level mechanisms behind these dynamics, but analytical tractability often comes at the cost of…
Cellularized tissue and polymer networks can both transition from floppy to rigid as a function of their control parameters, and, yet, the two systems often mechanically interact, which may affect their respective rigidities. To study this…
Cell migration plays a fundamental role in numerous physiological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. While cell-cell adhesion is known to regulate motion by shaping cell morphology and…
We investigate the steady-state organisation of active particles residing on an interface. Particle activity induces interface deformations, while the local shape of the interface guides particle movement. We consider multiple species of…
Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…
The maintenance of tissue and organ structures during dynamic homeostasis is often not well understood. In order for a system to be stable, cell renewal, cell migration and cell death must be finely balanced. Moreover, a tissue's shape must…
Apparent tissue surface tension allows the quantification of cell-cell cohesion and was reported to be a powerful indicator for the cellular rearrangements that take place during embryonic development or for cancer progression. The…
The statistical mechanics of flexible two-dimensional surfaces (membranes) appears in a wide variety of physical settings. In this talk we discuss the simplest case of fixed-connectivity surfaces. We first review the current theoretical…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
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…
Surface tension tends to minimize the area of interfaces between pieces of matter in different thermodynamic phases, be they in the solid or the liquid state. This can be relevant for the macroscopic shape of very soft solids, and lead to a…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of 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…
The notion of tissue surface tension has provided a physical understanding of morphogenetic phenomena such as tissue spreading or cell sorting. The measurement of tissue surface tension so far relied on strong approximations on the…
Incorporating effective tactile sensing and mechanical compliance is key towards enabling robust and safe operation of robots in unknown, uncertain and cluttered environments. Towards realizing this goal, we present a lightweight,…
There is mounting evidence indicating that relaxation dynamics in liquids approaching their glass transition not only becomes increasingly cooperative (1,2) but the relaxing regions also become more compact in shape(3-7). While the surface…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
The interaction of fluid membranes with a scaffold, which can be a planar surface or a more complex structure, is intrinsic to a number of systems - from artificial supported bilayers and vesicles to cellular membranes. In principle, these…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
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…