Related papers: What do cells regulate in soft tissues on short ti…
In view of ever-changing conditions both in the external world and in intrinsic brain states, maintaining the robustness of computations poses a challenge, adequate solutions to which we are only beginning to understand. At the level of…
Neurons regulate the distribution of signaling components across an extended tree-like cellular structure using both local and global feedback control. This is hypothesized to allow homeostatic control of the electrical activity of a neuron…
In order to grasp the features arising from cellular discreteness and individuality, in large parts of cell tissue modelling agent-based models are favoured. The subclass of off-lattice models allows for a physical motivation of the…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
During the life of animals, epithelial tissues undergo extensive deformations--first to form organs during embryogensis and later to preserve integrity and function in adulthood. To what extent these deformations resemble that of non-living…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Voltage and charge distributions in cellular microdomains regulate communications, excitability, and signal transduction. We report here new electrical laws in a cell, which follow from a nonlinear electro-diffusion model. These newly…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
Morphogenetic dynamics of tissue sheets require coordinated cell shape changes regulated by global patterning of mechanical forces. Inspired by such biological phenomena, we propose a minimal mechanochemical model based on the notion that…
Nonlinear stiffening is a ubiquitous property of major types of biopolymers that make up the extracellular matrices (ECM) including collagen, fibrin and basement membrane. Within the ECM, many types of cells such as fibroblasts and cancer…
Engineered heart tissues (EHTs) present a potential solution to some of the current challenges in the treatment of heart disease; however, the development of mature, adult-like cardiac tissues remains elusive. Mechanical stimuli have been…
Cellular cortex, which is a highly viscous thin cytoplasmic layer just below the cell membrane, controls the cell's mechanical properties, which can be characterized by a hydrodynamic length scale $\ell$. Cells actively regulate $\ell$ via…
How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback from the…
The spatiotemporal coordination and regulation of cell proliferation is fundamental in many aspects of development and tissue maintenance. Cells have the ability to adapt their division rates in response to mechanical constraints, yet we do…
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…
The work is devoted to the analysis of cell population dynamics where cells make a choice between differentiation and apoptosis. This choice is based on the values of intracellular proteins whose concentrations are described by a system of…
Biological growth is often driven by mechanical cues, such as changes in external pressure or tensile loading. Moreover, it is well known that many living tissues actively maintain a preferred level of mechanical internal stress, called the…
We propose a three dimensional mechanical model of embryonic tissue dynamics. Mechanically coupled adherent cells are represented as particles interconnected with elastic beams which can exert non-central forces and torques. Tissue…
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…