Related papers: Small-scale demixing in confluent biological tissu…

Spontaneous phase separation, or demixing, is important in biological phenomena such as cell sorting. In particle-based models, an open question is whether differences in diffusivity can drive such demixing. While…

Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…

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…

The influence of size differences, shape, mass and persistent motion on phase separation in binary mixtures has been intensively studied. Here we focus on the exclusive role of diffusivity differences in binary mixtures of equal-sized…

Confluent cell monolayers and epithelia tissues show remarkable patterns and correlations in structural arrangements and actively-driven collective flows. We simulate these properties using multiphase field models. The models are based on…

Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…

Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require confluent cell monolayers/bulk tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cell shape alone can…

Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…

Flowing granular materials segregate due to differences in particle size (driven by percolation) and density (driven by buoyancy). Modelling the segregation of mixtures of large/heavy particles and small/light particles is challenging due…

Cross-sections of cell shapes in a tissue monolayer typically resemble a tiling of convex polygons. Yet, examples exist where the polygons are not convex with curved cell-cell interfaces, as seen in the adaxial epidermis. To date,…

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…

We experimentally study particle scale dynamics during segregation of a bidisperse mixture under oscillatory shear. Large and small particles show an underlying asymmetry that is dependent on the local particle concentration, with small…

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…

Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially…

As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively, whereas variation of shape from cell-to-cell is dismissed most…

Epithelial cell monolayers show remarkable displacement and velocity correlations over distances of ten or more cell sizes that are reminiscent of supercooled liquids and active nematics. We show that many observed features can be described…

In dense biological tissues, cell types performing different roles remain segregated by maintaining sharp interfaces. To better understand the mechanisms for such sharp compartmentalization, we study the effect of an imposed heterotypic…

A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…

The study of interactions between biomimetic membranes and micron-sized particles is crucial for understanding various biological processes. Here, we control microparticle spontaneous engulfment by giant lipid vesicles by tuning particle…

In vivo and in vitro cells rely on the support of an underlying biocompatible substrate, such as the extracellular matrix or a culture substrate, to spread and proliferate. The mechanical and chemical properties of such structures play a…