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We coarse-grain a model of closely-packed ellipses that can vary their aspect ratio to derive continuum equations for materials comprising confluent deformable particles such as epithelial cell layers. We show that contractile nearest…
In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…
An interesting aspect in the research of complex (dusty) plasmas is the experimental study of the interaction of micro-particles with the surrounding plasma for diagnostic purposes. Local electric fields can be determined from the behaviour…
The shape of a cell influences and it is influenced by interactions with its neighbouring partners. Here, we introduce a coarse-grained model of non-reciprocal interactions between single-cell organisms to study emergent morphologies during…
The strongly interacting system created in ultrarelativistic nuclear collisions behaves almost as an ideal fluid with rich patterns of the velocity field exhibiting strong vortical structure. Vorticity of the fluid, via spin-orbit coupling,…
The polarisation of cells and tissues is fundamental for tissue morphogenesis during biological development and regeneration. A deeper understanding of biological polarity pattern formation can be gained from the consideration of pattern…
The biological cell exhibits a fantastic range of behaviors, but ultimately these are governed by a handful of physical and chemical principles. Here we explore simple theory, known for decades and based on the simple thermodynamics of…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…
Curvature plays a central role in the proper function of many biological processes. With active matter being a standard framework for understanding many aspects of the physics of life, it is natural to ask what effect curvature has on the…
This paper deals with the complex problem of how to simulate multiparticle contacts. The collision process is responsible for the transfer and dissipation of energy in granular media. A novel model of the interaction force between particles…
The dielectric behavior of a linear cluster of two or more living cells connected by tight junctions is analyzed using a spectral method. The polarizability of this system is obtained as an expansion over the eigenmodes of the linear…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
We analyse a generic motility model, with the motility mechanism arising by contractile stress due to the interaction of myosin and actin. A hydrodynamic active polar gel theory is used to model the cytoplasm of a cell and is combined with…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
Biological cells exhibit a hierarchical spatial organization, where various compartments harbor condensates that form by phase separation. Cells can control the emergence of these condensates by affecting compartment size, the amount of the…
To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…
The electrophoretic motion of a conducting particle, driven by an induced charge mechanism, is analyzed. The dependence of the motion upon particle shape is embodied in four tensorial coefficients that relate the particle velocities to the…
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
Diffusion in cell biology is important and complicated. Diffusing particles must contend with a complex environment as they make their way through the cell. We analyze a particular type of complexity that arises when diffusing particles…
A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…