Related papers: Mechanical heterogeneity in tissues promotes rigid…
Breast cancer invasion into adipose tissue strongly influences disease progression and metastasis. The degree of cancer cell invasion into adipose tissue depends on numerous biochemical and physical properties of cancer cells, adipocytes,…
Coherent angular rotation of epithelial cells is thought to contribute to many vital physiological processes including tissue morphogenesis and glandular formation. However, factors regulating this motion, and the implications of this…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
Models for confluent biological tissues often describe the network formed by cells as a triple-junction network, similar to foams. However, higher order vertices or multicellular rosettes are prevalent in developmental and {\it in vitro}…
Tumor cells invade individually or in groups, mediated by mechanical interactions between cells and their surrounding matrix. These multicellular dynamics are reminiscent of leader-follower coordination and epithelial-mesenchymal…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
The growth of several biological tissues is known to be controlled in part by local geometrical features, such as the curvature of the tissue interface. This control leads to changes in tissue shape that in turn can affect the tissue's…
Spatiotemporal patterns in multicellular systems are important to understanding tissue dynamics, for instance, during embryonic development and disease. Here, we use a multiphase field model to study numerically the behavior of a…
Collective cell migration is a highly regulated process involved in wound healing, cancer metastasis and morphogenesis. Mechanical interactions among cells provide an important regulatory mechanism to coordinate such collective motion.…
Cell competition is a quality control mechanism in tissues that results in the elimination of less fit cells. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of cell competition has been identified in many physiological and pathological contexts,…
Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), and the corresponding reverse process, Mesenchymal-Epithelial Transition (MET), are dynamic and reversible cellular programs orchestrated by many changes at biochemical and morphological levels. A…
Invasiveness, one of the hallmarks of tumor progression, represents the tumor's ability to expand into the host tissue by means of several complex biochemical and biomechanical processes. Since certain aspects of the problem present a…
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…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
Collective cell movement, characterized by multiple cells that are in contact for substantial periods of time and undergo correlated motion, plays a central role in cancer and embryogenesis. Recent imaging experiments have provided…
Although tissues are usually studied in isolation, this situation rarely occurs in biology, as cells, tissues, and organs, coexist and interact across scales to determine both shape and function. Here, we take a quantitative approach…
Cell extrusion is an essential mechanism for controlling cell density in epithelial tissues. Another essential element of epithelia is curvature, which is required to achieve complex shapes, like in the lung or intestine. Here we introduce…
A common mechanism for intracellular transport is the use of controlled deformations of the membrane to create spherical or tubular buds. While the basic physical properties of homogeneous membranes are relatively well-known, the effects of…
Cellular populations such as avascular tumors and microbial biofilms may "invade" or grow into surrounding populations. The invading population is often comprised of a heterogeneous mixture of cells with varying growth rates. The population…
How can dense biological tissue maintain sharp boundaries between coexisting cell populations? We explore this question within a simple vertex model for cells, focusing on the role of topology and tissue surface tension. We show that the…