Related papers: Mechanical behavior of multi-cellular spheroids un…
It is known that mechanical interactions couple a cell to its neighbors, enabling a feedback loop to regulate tissue growth. However, the interplay between cell-cell adhesion strength, local cell density and force fluctuations in regulating…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
This paper proposes a proof of concept application of a biphasic constitutive model to identify the mechanical properties of in vivo human skin under extension. Although poromechanics theory has been extensively used to model other soft…
Mechanical signaling plays a key role in biological processes like embryo development and cancer growth. One prominent way to probe mechanical properties of tissues is to study their response to externally applied forces. Using a…
The rheology of biological tissue is key to processes such as embryo development, wound healing and cancer metastasis. Vertex models of confluent tissue monolayers have uncovered a spontaneous liquid-solid transition tuned by cell shape;…
Many morphogenetic processes involve mechanical rearrangement of epithelial tissues that is driven by precisely regulated cytoskeletal forces and cell adhesion. The mechanical state of the cell and intercellular adhesion are not only the…
Making use of the poroelastic theory for hydrated polymeric matrices, the ultrasound (US) propagation in a gel medium filled by spherical cells is studied . The model describes the connection between the poroelastic structure of living…
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…
The effective macroscopic response of nonlinear elastomeric inhomogeneous materials is of great interest in many applications including nonlinear composite materials and soft biological tissues. The interest of the present work is…
The mechanical characterization of cell spheroids, one of the most widely used 3D biology models in vitro, is a hotspot of current research on the role played by the mechanical response of cells and tissues. The techniques proposed so far…
Metastatic tumors often invade healthy neighboring tissues by forming multicellular finger-like protrusions emerging from the cancer mass. To understand the mechanical context behind this phenomenon, we here develop a minimalist fluid model…
In these Lecture Notes we aim at clarifying how soft matter physics, and herein notably statistical mechanics and fluid mechanics, can be engaged to understand and manipulate non-equilibrium systems consisting of numerous (microscopic)…
Flow-induced failure of granular materials is relevant to a broad range of geomechanical applications. Plasticity, which is the inherent failure mechanism of most granular materials, enables large deformations that can invalidate linearised…
The rheology of cohesive granular materials, under a constant pressure condition, is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Depending on the shear rate, pressure, and interparticle cohesiveness, the system exhibits four distinctive…
Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…
Epithelial tissues act as barriers and, therefore, must repair themselves, respond to environmental changes and grow without compromising their integrity. Consequently, they exhibit complex viscoelastic rheological behavior where…
We simulate macroscopic shear experiments in active nematics and compare them with microrheology simulations where a spherical probe particle is dragged through an active fluid. In both cases we define an effective viscosity: in the case of…
The main goal of this work is to clarify and quantify, by means of mathematical analysis, the role of structural viscoelasticity in the biomechanical response of deformable porous media with incompressible constituents to sudden changes in…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
In vitro collagen networks and in silico fiber network models are typically used to represent extracellular matrix in tissues. Such networks exhibit the phenomenon of strain-stiffening, or an increase in elastic modulus with increasing…