Related papers: Optimal mechanical interactions direct multicellul…
Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…
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…
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…
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…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
Many cell functions require a concerted effort from multiple membrane proteins, for example, for signaling, cell division, and endocytosis. One contribution to their successful self-organization stems from the membrane deformations that…
We demonstrate how concepts of statistical mechanics of interacting particles can have important implications in the choice of interaction potentials to model qualitative properties of cell aggregates in theoretical biology. We illustrate…
Synchronization of activity among myocytes constituting vital organs, e.g., the heart, is crucial for physiological functions. Self-organized coordination in such heterogeneous ensemble of excitable and oscillatory cells is therefore of…
Reinforced elastic sheets surround us in daily life, from concrete shell buildings to biological structures such as the arthropod exoskeleton or the venation network of dicotyledonous plant leaves. Natural structures are often highly…
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…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
The actin cortex of an animal cell is a thin polymeric layer attached to the inner side of the plasma membrane. It plays a key role in shape regulation and pattern formation on the cellular and tissue scale and, in particular, generates the…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Plant organ outgrowth superficially appears like the continuous mechanical deformation of a sheet of cells. Yet, how precisely cells as individual mechanical entities can act to morph a tissue reliably and efficiently into three dimensions…
The study of organoids, artificially grown cell aggregates with the functionality and small-scale anatomy of real organs, is one of the most active areas of research in biology and biophysics, yet the basic physical origins of their…
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
The dynamics of cellular pattern formation is crucial for understanding embryonic development and tissue morphogenesis. Recent studies have shown that human dermal fibroblasts cultured on liquid crystal elastomers can exhibit an increase in…
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…