Related papers: What do cells regulate in soft tissues on short ti…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
The feedback between mechanical and chemical signals plays a key role in controlling many biological processes and collective cell behavior. Here we focus on the emergence of spatiotemporal density waves in a one-dimensional "cell train."…
Epithelial tissues are continuously exposed to cyclic stretch. Physiological stretching has been found to regulate soft tissue function at the molecular, cellular, and tissue scales, allowing tissues to preserve their homeostasis and adapt…
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…
The unique nonlinear mechanics of the fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) facilitates long-range cell-cell mechanical communications that would be impossible on linear elastic substrates. Past research has described the contribution of two…
Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…
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…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
During embryonic development, regeneration and homeostasis, cells have to physically integrate into their target tissues, where they ultimately execute their function. Despite a significant body of research on how mechanical forces instruct…
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 mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Mechanical forces influence the dynamics of growing tissues. Computer simulations are employed to study the importance of interfacial effects in tissue competition. It was speculated that mechanical pressure determines the competition,…
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a highly complex structure through which biochemical and mechanical signals are transmitted. In processes of cell migration, the ECM also acts as a scaffold, providing structural support to cells as well as…
Multicellular tissues are the building blocks of many biological systems and organs. These tissues are not static, but dynamically change over time. Even if the overall structure remains the same there is a turnover of cells within the…
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…
Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…