Related papers: Active morphogenesis of patterned epithelial shell…
In soft matter, the phase of nematic liquid crystals can be made from anisotropic molecules in single component materials, or as a suspension of mesoscopic nematogens. The later offers more versatility in the experimental design of complex…
We introduce an Active Vertex Model (AVM) for cell-resolution studies of the mechanics of confluent epithelial tissues consisting of tens of thousands of cells, with a level of detail inaccessible to similar methods. The AVM combines the…
During the early developmental process of organisms, the formation of the left-right laterality requires a subtle mechanism, as it is associated with other principal body axes. Any inherent chiral feature in an egg cell can in principal…
A two-dimensional mathematical model for dynamics of endothelial cells in angiogenesis is investigated. Angiogenesis is a morphogenic process in which new blood vessels emerge from an existing vascular network. Recently a one-dimensional…
Biological processes, from morphogenesis to tumor invasion, spontaneously generate shear stresses inside living tissue. The mechanisms that govern the transmission of mechanical forces in epithelia and the collective response of the tissue…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematic film is topologically constraint. These topological constraints allow to control the non-equilibrium dynamics of the active system. We consider ellipsoidal shapes for…
The displacement of a fluid by another less viscous one in a quasi-two dimensional geometry typically leads to complex fingering patterns. In an isotropic system, dense-branching growth arises, which is characterized by repeated…
Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
Before septation processes shape its four chambers, the embryonic heart is a straight tube that spontaneously bends and twists breaking the left-right symmetry. In particular, the heart tube is subjected to a cell remodelling inducing…
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…
Epithelia form protective barriers in multicellular organisms. To maintain homeostasis, they must be able to regenerate and heal damaged areas. This occurs through collective cell migration, during which finger-like protrusions commonly…
One of the hallmarks of pre-migratory tumors is the progressive loss of compact morphology. To investigate how tumors may intrinsically regulate their shape during growth, we employ a three-dimensional (3D) vertex model of multicellular…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
A ubiquitous motif in nature is the self-similar hierarchical buckling of a thin lamina near its margins. This is seen in leaves, flowers, fungi, corals, and marine invertebrates. We investigate this morphology from the perspective of…
The shape of a cell influences and it is influenced by interactions with its neighbouring partners. Here, we introduce a coarse-grained model of non-reciprocal interactions between single-cell organisms to study emergent morphologies during…
It is widely recognized that the shape of epithelial cells is determined by the tension generated by the actomyosin cortex and the adhesion of cells to the substrate and to each other. To account for these biological and structural…
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…
Motivated to understand the behavior of biological filaments interacting with membranes of various types, we study a theoretical model for the shape and thermodynamics of intrinsically-helical filaments bound to curved membranes. We show…