Related papers: Anomalous elasticity of cellular tissue vertex mod…
Previous research on semiflexible polymers including cytoskeletal networks in cells has suggested the existence of distinct regimes of elastic response, in which the strain field is either uniform (affine) or non-uniform (non-affine) under…
We present a Landau type theory for the non-linear elasticity of biopolymer gels with a part of the order parameter describing induced nematic order of fibers in the gel. We attribute the non-linear elastic behavior of these materials to…
The mechanical properties of tissues play an essential role for all tissue properties such as cell division, and differentiation or morphogenesis. Here, we study theoretically the rheology of 2-dimensional epithelial tissues described by a…
Models of tissue growth are now well established, in particular in relation to their applications to cancer. They describe the dynamics of cells subject to motion resulting from a pressure gradient generated by the death and birth of cells,…
A two-dimensional lattice gas model is proposed. The ground state of this model with a fixed density is neither periodic nor quasi-periodic. It also depends on system size in an irregular manner. On the other hand, it is ordered in the…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Athermal models of disordered fibrous networks are highly useful for studying the mechanics of elastic networks composed of stiff biopolymers. The underlying network architecture is a key aspect that can affect the elastic properties of…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
We study the response of a model micro-electrochemical cell to a large ac voltage of frequency comparable to the inverse cell relaxation time. To bring out the basic physics, we consider the simplest possible model of a symmetric binary…
Convergent extension of epithelial tissue is a key motif of animal morphogenesis. On a coarse scale, cell motion resembles laminar fluid flow; yet in contrast to a fluid, epithelial cells adhere to each other and maintain the tissue layer…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
We employ a matrix-based solver for the linear rheology of fluid-immersed disordered spring networks to reveal four distinct dynamic response regimes. One regime - completely absent in the known vacuum response - exhibits coupled fluid flow…
This study addresses the modelling of elastic bodies, particularly when the relaxed configuration is unknown or non-existent. We adopt the theory of initially stressed materials, incorporating the deformation gradient and stress state of…
The elastic properties of a material with spherical voids of equal volume are analysed using a new model, with particular attention paid to the hexagonal close-packed and the face-centred cubic arrangement of voids. Void fractions well…
We investigate a continuum mechanical model for an adherent cell on two dimensional adhesive micropatterned substrates. The cell is modeled as an isotropic and homogeneous elastic material subject to uniform internal contractile stresses.…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
The vertex model is widely used to simulate the mechanical properties of confluent epithelia and other multicellular tissues. This inherently discrete framework allows a Cauchy stress to be attributed to each cell, and its symmetric…
A controllable soft solid is realised in vortex matter in a type II superconductor. The two-dimensional unit cell area can be varied by a factor of $10^4$ in the solid phase, without a change of crystal symmetry offering easy exploration of…
Active nematic models explain the topological defects and flow patterns observed in epithelial tissues, but the nature of active stress-whether it is extensile or contractile, a key parameter of the theory-is not well established…