Related papers: Are homeostatic states stable? Dynamical stability…
Plants are a paradigm for active shape control in response to stimuli. For instance, it is well-known that a tilted plant will eventually straighten vertically, demonstrating the influence of both an external stimulus, gravity, and an…
Plant morphogenesis relies on dynamic growth deformations at the cell and tissue scales driven by osmotic fluxes. A mechanistic understanding of this phenomenon demands a physical framework that integrates cell imbibition, tissue mechanics,…
What are the general principles that allow proper growth of a tissue or an organ? A growing leaf is an example of such a system: it increases its area by orders of magnitude, maintaining a proper (usually flat) shape. How can this be…
The simulation of growth processes within soft biological tissues is of utmost importance for many applications in the medical sector. Within this contribution we propose a new macroscopic approach fro modelling stress-driven volumetric…
A dynamical systems scenario for developmental cell biology is proposed, based on numerical studies of a system with interacting units with internal dynamics and reproduction. Diversification, formation of discrete and recursive types, and…
We present some existence results for three-dimensional quasistatic morphoelasticity. The state of the growing body is described by its deformation and the underlying growth tensor and is ruled by the interplay of hyperelastic energy…
Microbial growth and division are fundamental processes relevant to many areas of life science. Of particular interest are homeostasis mechanisms, which buffer growth and division from accumulating fluctuations over multiple cycles. These…
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…
The importance of individual cells in a developing multicellular organism is well known but precisely how the individual cellular characteristics of those cells collectively drive the emergence of robust, homeostatic structures is less well…
The mechanical behaviour of solid biological tissues has long been described using models based on classical continuum mechanics. However, the classical continuum theories of elasticity and viscoelasticity cannot easily capture the…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
Convergent extension of epithelial tissue is a key motif of animal morphogenesis. On a coarse scale, cell motion resembles laminar fluid flow; yet in contrast to a fluid, epithelial cells adhere to each other and maintain the tissue layer…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…
Mathematical models of biological growth commonly attempt to distinguish deformation due to growth from that due to mechanical stresses through a hypothesised multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. Here we demonstrate…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
The search for universal laws that help establish a relationship between dynamics and computation is driven by recent expansionist initiatives in biologically inspired computing. A general setting to understand both such dynamics and…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
A simple kinematic growth model for muscular arteries is presented which allows the incorporation of residual stresses such that a homeostatic in-vivo stress state under physiological loading is obtained. To this end, new evolution…
In this paper we propose an existence and uniqueness theory for the solutions of a system of non-linear hyperbolic conservation laws, structured in age and maturity variables, representing a tissue environment. In particular we are…
A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the developing…