Related papers: Alignment interactions drive structural transition…
The organization of live cells to tissues is associated with the mechanical interaction between cells, which is mediated through their elastic environment. We model cells as spherical active force dipoles surrounded by an infinite elastic…
The polarisation of cells and tissues is fundamental for tissue morphogenesis during biological development and regeneration. A deeper understanding of biological polarity pattern formation can be gained from the consideration of pattern…
Living things enact control of non-equilibrium, dynamical structures through complex biochemical networks, accomplishing spatiotemporally-orchestrated physiological tasks such as cell division, motility, and embryogenesis. While the exact…
We study the vertex model for epithelial tissue mechanics extended to include coupling between the cell shapes and tensions in cell-cell junctions. This coupling represents an active force which drives the system out of equilibrium and…
Dynamics is central to living systems. In the last two decades, experiments have revealed that the dynamics in diverse biological systems - from intracellular cytoplasm to cellular and organismal aggregates - are remarkably similar to that…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…
The organization of live cells into tissues and their subsequent biological function involves inter-cell mechanical interactions, which are mediated by their elastic environment. To model this interaction, we consider cells as spherical…
Recent work on particle-based models of tissues has suggested that any finite rate of cell division and cell death is sufficient to fluidize an epithelial tissue. At the same time, experimental evidence has indicated the existence of glassy…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
I show the assumed Bilayer structure of cell membranes is Topologically falsified by known aminophospholipid dynamics in metabolically-active, Far from Equilibrium cells. The sensitivity of lipid and cytoplasmic flows to temperature,…
Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…
Confluent populations of elongated cells give rise to ordered patterns seen in nematic phase liquid crystals. We correlate cell elongation and intercellular distance with intercellular alignment using an amorphous spin glass model. We…
A qualitative model is presented, suggesting gravitational information is transduced into biological systems primarily by its effect on spatially organised membrane and cytoplasmic flows. Continuous low affinity interactions between…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
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,…
Cell monolayers are a central model system to tissue biophysics. In vivo, epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and curvature's role in the onset of spontaneous tissue flows is still not well-understood. Here, we present a…