Related papers: Dynamics, scaling behavior, and control of nuclear…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
The Drosophila melanogaster embryo, an elongated multi-nucleated cell, is a classical model system for eukaryotic development and morphogenesis. Recent work has shown that bulk cytoplasmic flows, driven by cortical contractions along the…
A biophysical issue how the nuclear size dynamically scales with the cellular size remains mysterious. We develop a theoretical framework in which the interactions between polydisperse biomolecules and the mechanical elasticity of the cell…
Recent experiments by Kantsler et. al. (2007) have shown that the relaxational dynamics of a vesicle in external elongation flow is accompanied by the formation of wrinkles on a membrane. Motivated by these experiments we present a theory…
We measure different contributions to entropy production in a living functional epithelial tissue. We do this by extracting the functional dynamics of development while at the same time quantifying fluctuations. Using the translucent…
In this article, we propose a general framework to study the dynamics and topology of cellular networks that capture the geometry of cell packings in two-dimensional tissues. Such epithelia undergo large-scale deformation during…
The shear-induced deformation of a capsule with a stiff nucleus, a model of eukaryotic cells, is studied numerically. The membrane of the cell and of its nucleus are modelled as a thin and impermeable elastic material obeying a Neo-Hookean…
The prevalence of multicellular organisms is due in part to their ability to form complex structures. How cells pack in these structures is a fundamental biophysical issue, underlying their functional properties. However, much remains…
Intact-organism imaging of Drosophila larvae reveals and quantifies chromatin-aqueous phase separation. The chromatin can be organized near the lamina layer of the nuclear envelope, conventionally fill the nucleus, be organized centrally,…
Droplets are essential for spatially controlling biomolecules in cells. To work properly, cells need to control the emergence and morphology of droplets. On the one hand, driven chemical reactions can affect droplets profoundly. For…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
The buckling of elastic bodies is a common phenomenon in the mechanics of solids. Wrinkling of membranes can often be interpreted as buckling under constraints that prohibit large amplitude deformation. We present a combination of analytic…
We present direct measurements of fluctuations in the nucleus of yeast cells. While prior work has shown these fluctuations to be active and non-thermal in character, their origin and time dependence are not understood. We show that the…
Morphogenetic dynamics of tissue sheets require coordinated cell shape changes regulated by global patterning of mechanical forces. Inspired by such biological phenomena, we propose a minimal mechanochemical model based on the notion that…
The cell nucleus is increasingly recognized as a mechanosensitive organelle whose mesoscale mechanical heterogeneity (100 nm 10 um) is inseparable from genome regulation yet remains weakly integrated into systems biology and omics…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
A novel assay based on micropatterning and time-lapse microscopy has been developed for the study of nuclear migration dynamics in cultured mammalian cells. When cultured on 10-20 um wide adhesive stripes, the motility of C6 glioma and…
Thin solids often develop elastic instabilities and subsequently complex, multiscale deformation patterns. Revealing the organizing principles of this spatial complexity has ramifications for our understanding of morphogenetic processes in…
Cell shape changes are largely controlled by the actin cytoskeleton, a dynamic filament network beneath the plasma membrane. Several cell types can form extended free-standing protrusions not supported by an extracellular substrate or…
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…