Related papers: Interplay between epidermal stem cell dynamics and…
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…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…
Biological membranes are complex, dynamic structures essential for cellular compartmentalization, signaling, and mechanical integrity. The molecular organization of eukaryotic membranes has been extensively studied, including the lipid…
The rheological properties of biological tissues are core to processes such as cancer metastasis, wound healing and embryo development. The emergence of tissue and organ structures during morphogenesis requires the precise formation of…
The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…
This work presents a general unified theory for coupled nonlinear elastic and inelastic deformations of curved thin shells. The coupling is based on a multiplicative decomposition of the surface deformation gradient. The kinematics of this…
This study investigates the coupled deformation and flow behavior of thin, hyper-elastic, porous membranes subjected to pressure loading. Using bulge test experiments, optical deformation measurements, and flow rate characterization, we…
Molecular biology explains function of molecules by their geometrical and electronical structures that are mainly determined by utilization of quantum effects in chemistry. However, further quantum effects are not thought to play any…
From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…
We perform cell segmentation on images from experimental studies of confluent, mobile cells in epithelial monolayers and show that these systems possess a broad, positively-skewed shape parameter distribution $P(\mathcal{A})$, where…
A dynamic model for cell differentiation is studied, where cells with internal chemical reaction dynamics interact with each other and replicate. It leads to spontaneous differentiation of cells and determination, as is discussed in the…
We study here the microscopic deformations of elastic lamellae constituting a superhydrophobic substrate under different wetting conditions of a sessile droplet using electrowetting. The deformation profiles of the lamellae are…
Lipid membranes are abundant in living organisms, where they constitute a surrounding shell for cells and their organelles. There are many circumstances in which the deformations of lipid membranes are involved in living cells: fusion and…
Many tissues take the form of thin sheets, being only a single cell thick, but millions of cells wide. These tissue sheets can bend and buckle in the third dimension. In this work, we investigated the growth and shrinkage of suspended and…
Cell spreading requires a major reorganisation of the actin cytoskeleton, from a cortical structure to a lamellipodium where filaments are mostly parallel to the substrate. We propose a model inspired by the physics of nematic liquid…
Recent advancements in the ability to construct three-dimensional (3D) tissues and organoids from stem cells and biomaterials have not only opened abundant new research avenues in disease modeling and regenerative medicine but also have…
Morphogenesis, tissue regeneration and cancer invasion involve transitions in tissue morphology. These transitions, caused by collective cell migration (CCM), have been interpreted as active wetting/de-wetting transitions. This phenomenon…
We study the elastic response of bilayer membranes with fixed projected area to both stretching and shape deformations. A surface tension is associated to each of these deformations. By using model amphiphilic membranes and computer…
Shape transformations of epithelial tissues in three dimensions, which are crucial for embryonic development or in vitro organoid growth, can result from active forces generated within the cytoskeleton of the epithelial cells. How the…