Related papers: Interplay between surface and bending energy helps…
We investigate the elasticity of unsupported epithelial monolayer and we discover that unlike a thin solid plate, which wrinkles if geometrically incompatible with the underlying substrate, the epithelium may do so even in absence of the…
Active contributions to fluctuations are a direct consequence of metabolic energy consumption in living cells. Such metabolic processes continuously create active forces, which deform the membrane to control motility, proliferation as well…
The transport of energy in a moving fluid with a simply connected free surface is analyzed, taking into account the contribution of surface tension. This is done by following a "control volume" with arbitrary, specified velocity,…
A sponge subjected to an increase of the outside fluid pressure expands its volume but nearly mantains its true density and thus gives way to an increase of the interstitial volume. This behaviour, not yet properly described by solid-fluid…
Dispersions of immiscible liquids, such as emulsions and polymer blends, are at the core of many industrial applications which makes the understanding of their properties (morphology, stability, etc.) of great interest. A wide range of…
We derived free energy functional of a bilayer lipid membrane from the first principles of elasticity theory. The model explicitly includes position-dependent mutual slide of monolayers and bending deformation. Our free energy functional of…
When an elastic object is dragged through a viscous fluid tangent to a rigid boundary, it experiences a lift force perpendicular to its direction of motion. An analogous lift mechanism occurs when a rigid symmetric object translates…
The influence of an electric field on a poorly conductive membrane such as a lipid bilayer is studied theoretically. The unbalanced electric stress created by an ionic current across a non-perfectly flat membrane gives rise to a…
Adhesion between two bodies is a key parameter in wear processes. At the macroscale, strong adhesive bonds are known to lead to high wear rates, as observed in clean metal-on-metal contact. Reducing the strength of the interfacial adhesion…
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…
We study force generation by a set of parallel actin filaments growing against a non-rigid obstacle, in presence of an external load. The filaments polymerize by either moving the whole obstacle, with a large energy cost, or by causing…
The collective action of actively contractile units embedded in elastic biopolymer networks plays a crucial role in regulating the network's macroscopic mechanical response. Here, we investigate how the macroscopic boundary stress in model…
We study the elastic properties of a two-dimensional fluctuating surface whose area density is allowed to deviate from its optimal (Schulman) value. The behavior of such a surface is determined by an interplay between the area-dependent…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
A periodic surface is one that is invariant by a 2D lattice of translations. Deformation modes that stretch the lattice without stretching the surface are effective membrane modes. Deformation modes that bend the lattice without stretching…
The Vertex Model for epithelia models the apical surface of the tissue by a tiling, with polygons representing cells and edges representing cell-cell junctions. The mechanics are described by an energy governed by deviations from a target…
We study the effect of membrane proteins on the shape, composition and thermodynamic stability of the surrounding membrane. When the coupling between membrane composition and curvature is strong enough the nearby composition and shape both…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
We study a physical model for the interaction between general inclusions bound to fluid membranes that possess finite tension, as well as the usual bending rigidity. We are motivated by an interest in proteins bound to cell membranes that…
Cell membrane tension directly influences various cellular functions. In this study, we developed a method to estimate surface tension from time-series data. We obtained the curvature-velocity relationship from time-series of binarized cell…