Related papers: Interfacial friction dictates long-range force pro…

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…

Multiphase field models have emerged as an important computational tool for understanding biological tissue while resolving single-cell properties. While they have successfully reproduced many experimentally observed behaviors of living…

During the spreading of epithelial tissues, the advancing tissue front often develops fingerlike protrusions. Their resemblance to traditional viscous fingering patterns in driven fluids suggests that epithelial fingers could arise from an…

Coordinated and cooperative motion of cells is essential for embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer invasion. A predictive understanding of the emergent mechanical behaviors in collective cell motion is…

Cells can sense and respond to mechanical signals over relatively long distances across fibrous extracellular matrices. Here, we explore all of the key factors that influence long range force transmission in cell-populated collagen…

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…

We propose a minimal mathematical model to explain long-range coordination of dynamics of multiple cells in epithelial spreading, which may be induced, under different conditions, by a chemical signal, or mechanical stress, or both. The…

Interfaces in tissues are ubiquitous, both between tissue and environment as well as between populations of different cell types. The propagation of an interface can be driven mechanically. % e.g. by a difference in the respective…

Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…

Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…

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…

A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…

Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…

Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…

One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces generated by contractile polymer bundles and networks,…

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…

Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…

A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…

Living tissues undergo wetting transitions: On a surface, they can either form a droplet-like cell aggregate or spread as a monolayer of migrating cells. Tissue wetting depends not only on the chemical but also on the mechanical properties…

A hallmark of biological tissues, viewed as complex cellular materials, is the active generation of mechanical stresses by cellular processes, such as cell divisions. Each cellular event generates a force dipole that deforms the surrounding…