Related papers: What do cells regulate in soft tissues on short ti…
Both animal and plant tissue exhibit a nonlinear rheological phenomenon known as compression stiffening, or an increase in moduli with increasing uniaxial compressive strain. Does such a phenomenon exist in single cells, which are the…
In equilibrium, the physical properties of matter are set by the interactions between the constituents. In contrast, the energy input of the individual components controls the behavior of synthetic or living active matter. Great progress…
Cell shape is linked to cell function. The significance of cell morphodynamics, namely the temporal fluctuation of cell shape, is much less understood. Here we study the morphodynamics of MDA-MB-231 cells in type I collagen extracellular…
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)…
Collagen fibers, an important component of the extracellular matrix (ECM), can both inhibit and promote cellular migration. {\it In-vitro} studies have revealed that the fibers' orientations are crucial to cellular invasion, while {\it…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry. Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a…
Mechanical stresses stemming from environmental factors are a key determinant of cellular behavior and physiology. Yet, the role of self-induced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies has remained largely unexplored. Here, we…
Over the last two decades, scientific literature has been blooming with various means of simulating epithelial cell colonies. Each of these simulations can be separated by their respective efficiency (expressed in terms of consumed…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…
Mechanochemical models of pattern formation in biological tissues have been used to study a variety of biomedical systems and describe the physical interactions between cells and their local surroundings. These models generally consist of a…
Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Through modelling and simulations we show that material instabilities play a dominant role in the mechanical behavior of the fibrous collagen Extracellular Matrix (ECM), as observed when the ECM is deformed by contractile biological cells.…
Cell mechanical properties are fundamental to the organism but remain poorly understood. We report a comprehensive phenomenological framework for the nonlinear rheology of single fibroblast cells: a superposition of elastic stiffening and…
Most microorganisms regulate their cell size. We review here some of the mathematical formulations of the problem of cell size regulation. We focus on coarse-grained stochastic models and the statistics they generate. We review the…
Tumor metastasis, traditionally considered as random spreading of individual cancer cells, has been shown to also involve coordinated collective invasion in the tissue space. Here we demonstrate experimentally and computationally that…
We review how sensorimotor control is dictated by interacting neural populations, optimal feedback mechanisms, and the biomechanics of bodies. First, we outline the distributed anatomical loops that shuttle sensorimotor signals between…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
We investigate morphologies of proliferating cellular tissues using a newly developed numerical simulation model for mechanical cell division and migration in 2D. The model is applied to a bimodal mixture consisting of stiff cells with a…