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

We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…

The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…

Cells exhibit qualitatively different behaviors on substrates with different rigidities. The fact that cells are more polarized on the stiffer substrate motivates us to construct a two-dimensional cell with the distribution of focal…

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…

Fluid flows in liquid metal batteries can be generated by a number of effects. We start with a short overview of different driving mechanisms and then address questions specific to the metal pad role instabilities in three-layer systems. We…

We present and analyse a model for cell signalling processes in biological tissues. The model includes diffusion and nonlinear reactions on the cell surfaces, and both inter- and intracellular signalling. Using techniques from the theory of…

Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…

Contractile forces exerted on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) lead to the alignment and stretching of constituent fibers within the vicinity of cells. As a consequence, the matrix reorganizes to form thick bundles of aligned…

Frictional interfaces are abundant in natural and manmade systems and their dynamics still pose challenges of fundamental and technological importance. A recent extensive compilation of multiple-source experimental data has revealed that…

Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…

Many multicellular communities propagate signals in a directed manner via excitable waves. Cell-to-cell heterogeneity is a ubiquitous feature of multicellular communities, but the effects of heterogeneity on wave propagation are still…

The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…

Complex systems with multiple processes evolving on different temporal scales are naturally described by multilayer networks, where each layer represents a different timescale. In this work, we show how the multilayer structure shapes the…

Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…

Many fundamental biological processes are dependent on cellular migration. Although the mechanical mechanisms of single-cell migration are relatively well understood, those underlying migration of multiple cells adhered to each other in a…

Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…

Dynamic Mode III interfacial fracture in a dissimilar square-cell lattice, composed of two contrasting mass-spring lattice half-planes joined at an interface, is considered. The fracture, driven by a remotely applied load, is assumed to…

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,…

We introduce a model for describing the dynamics of large numbers of interacting cells. The fundamental dynamical variables in the model are sub-cellular elements, which interact with each other through phenomenological intra- and…

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…