Related papers: Active wetting of epithelial tissues: modeling con…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Cells in tissues can organize into a broad spectrum of structures according to their function. Drastic changes of organization, such as epithelial-mesenchymal transitions or the formation of spheroidal aggregates, are often associated…
Complex tissue flows in epithelia are driven by intra- and inter-cellular processes that generate, maintain, and coordinate mechanical forces. There has been growing evidence that cell shape anisotropy, manifested as nematic order, plays an…
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…
The spread of metastases is a crucial process in which some questions remain unanswered. In this work, we focus on tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream, the so-called Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs). Our aim is to characterize their…
The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these…
Dense monolayers of living cells display intriguing relaxation dynamics, reminiscent of soft and glassy materials close to the jamming transition, and migrate collectively when space is available, as in wound healing or in cancer invasion.…
Wetting phenomena, molecular protrusions of lipid bilayers and membrane stacks under lateral tension provide physical examples for interacting surfaces with tension. Such surfaces are studied theoretically using functional renormalization…
Eukaryotic cells intrinsically change their shape, by changing the composition of their membrane and by restructuring their underlying cytoskeleton. We present here further studies and extensions of a minimal physical model, describing a…
The Extra-Cellular-Matrix (ECM) is a complex interconnected 3D network that provides structural support for the cells and tissues and defines organ architecture key for their healthy functioning. However, the intimate mechanisms by which…
Membrane wrapping underlies nanoparticle uptake during endocytosis, whereas the reverse process of membrane unwrapping accompanies particle expulsion and membrane fusion events. Existing theoretical descriptions typically focus on adhesion…
In amorphous solids as in tissues, neighbor exchanges can relax local stresses and allow the material to flow. In this paper, we use an anisotropic vertex model to study T1 rearrangements in polygonal cellular networks. We consider two…
Tissues are characterized by layers of functional units such as cells and extracellular matrix (ECM). Nevertheless, how dynamics at interlayer interfaces help transmit cellular forces in tissues remains overlooked. Here, we investigate a…
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…
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…
The ability of cells to reorganize in response to external stimuli is important in areas ranging from morphogenesis to tissue engineering. Elongated cells can co-align due to steric effects, forming states with local order. We show that…
Cell migration is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. During migration, a cell adapts its morphology, including the overall morphology and nucleus morphology, in response to various cues in complex microenvironments,…
Epithelial cell monolayers expand on substrates by forming finger-like protrusions, created by leader cells, in the monolayer boundary. Information transmission and communication between individual entities in the cohesive collective lead…
A lattice model for active matter is studied numerically, showing that it displays wettings transitions between three distinctive phases when in contact with an impenetrable wall. The particles in the model move persistently, tumbling with…
We investigate how randomly oriented cell traction forces lead to fluidisation in a vertex model of epithelial tissues. We find that the fluidisation occurs at a critical value of the traction force magnitude $F_c$. We show that this…