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We theoretically investigate the membrane fluctuations of red blood cells with focus laid on the role of the cytoskeleton, viewing the system as a membrane coupled to sparse spring network. This model is exactly solvable and enables us to…
Formation of bacterial colonies as biofilm on the surface/interface of various objects has the potential to impact not only human health and disease but also energy and environmental considerations. Biofilms can be regarded as soft…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Treating the epithelium as an incompressible fluid adjacent to a viscoelastic stroma, we find a novel hydrodynamic instability that leads to the formation of protrusions of the epithelium into the stroma. This instability is a candidate for…
The aim of this work is to quantify the spatio-temporal dynamics of flow-driven amoeboid locomotion in small ($\sim$100 $\mu$m) fragments of the true slime mold \phys {\it polycephalum}. In this model organism, cellular contraction drives…
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…
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…
Foams and dense emulsions display complex mechanical behavior, including intermittent rearrangement dynamics, power-law rheology, and slow recovery after perturbation. These effects have long been considered evidence for glassy physics in…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
Interfaces between stratified epithelia and their supporting stromas commonly exhibit irregular shapes. Undulations are particularly pronounced in dysplastic tissues and typically evolve into long, finger-like protrusions in carcinomas. In…
The plasma membrane of human red blood cells consists of a lipid bilayer attached to a regular network of underlying cytoskeletal polymers. We model this system at a dynamic coarse-grained level, treating the bilayer as an elastic sheet and…
We consider the slow and athermal deformations of amorphous solids and show how the ensuing sequence of discrete plastic rearrangements can be mapped onto a directed network. The network topology reveals a set of highly connected regions…
Destructive mechanical breakdowns and fractures are ubiquitous events in driven physical matter; living tissues, by contrast, can rupture repeatedly while restoring integrity. Here we study rupture repair interplay in regenerating Hydra…
An accurate modeling of reactive flows in fractured porous media is a key ingredient to obtain reliable numerical simulations of several industrial and environmental applications. For some values of the physical parameters we can observe…
The spiking activity of principal cells in mammalian hippocampus encodes an internalized neuronal representation of the ambient space---a cognitive map. Once learned, such a map enables the animal to navigate a given environment for a long…
How cells with diverse morphologies and cytoskeletal architectures modulate their mechanical behaviors to drive robust collective motion within tissues is poorly understood. During wound repair within epithelial monolayers in vitro, cells…
Plasticity after stroke is a complex phenomenon initiated by the functional reorganization of the brain, especially in the perilesional tissue. At macroscales, the reestablishment of segregation within the affected hemisphere and…
Tendrils coil their shape to anchor the plant to supporting structures, allowing vertical growth toward light. Although climbing plants have been studied for a long time, extracting information regarding the relationship between the…
Cytoskeletal networks can repair defects to maintain structural integrity. However, the mechanisms and dynamics of defect merging remain poorly understood. Here we report a geometry-tunable merging mechanism in microtubule-motor networks…
A series of simulations aimed at elucidating the self-assembly dynamics of spherical virus capsids is described. This little-understood phenomenon is a fascinating example of the complex processes that occur in the simplest of organisms.…