Related papers: What do cells regulate in soft tissues on short ti…
Cells crawling through tissues migrate inside a complex fibrous environment called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides signals regulating motility. Here we investigate one such well-known pathway, involving mutually antagonistic…
Soft solids with tunable mechanical response are at the core of new material technologies, but a crucial limit for applications is their progressive aging over time, which dramatically affects their functionalities. The generally accepted…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…
The mechanisms by which organs acquire their functional structure and realize its maintenance (or homeostasis) over time are still largely unknown. In this paper, we investigate this question on adipose tissue. Adipose tissue can represent…
Soft biological tissues exhibit a tendency to maintain a preferred state of tensile stress, known as tensional homeostasis, which is restored even after external mechanical stimuli. This macroscopic behavior can be described using the…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
We have developed a novel scanning probe-based methodology to study cell biomechanics. The time dependence of the force exerted by the cell surface on a scanning probe at constant local deformation has been used to extract local…
Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…
How cells move through the three-dimensional extracellular matrix (ECM) is of increasing interest in attempts to understand important biological processes such as cancer metastasis. Just as in motion on flat surfaces, it is expected that…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
Tissues are characterized by layers of functional units such as cells and extracellular matrix (ECM). Nevertheless, how dynamics at interlayer interfaces help transmit cellular forces in tissues remains overlooked. Here, we investigate a…
Biological cells are built up from many different constituents of varying size and stiffness which all contribute to the cell's mechanical properties. Despite this heterogeneity, in the analysis of experimental measurements such as atomic…
Previous models of the cerebrovascular smooth muscle cell have not addressed the interaction between the electrical, chemical and mechanical components of cell function during the development of active tension. These models are primarily…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Developing tissues often maintain mechanical coherence while continuously remodeling through cellular processes such as cell divisions and rearrangements. In this way, they are an example of amorphous solids. In passive amorphous solids,…
Self-regulation of living tissue as an example of self-organization phenomena in hierarchical systems of biological, ecological, and social nature is under consideration. The characteristic feature of these systems is the absence of any…
Biological membranes and vesicles play a central role in living systems, forming dynamic interfaces that regulate cellular organization and function. Classical descriptions of membrane mechanics that are rooted in equilibrium statistical…
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…
Cell size is a fundamental determinant of cellular physiology, influencing processes such as growth, division, and function. In this study, we develop a segmented mathematical framework to investigate how different control mechanisms…