Related papers: Random traction yielding transition in epithelial …
The art of making structural, polymeric and metallic glasses is rapidly developing with many applications. A limitation to their use is their mechanical stability: under increasing external strain all amorphous solids respond elastically to…
The yielding transition of amorphous materials is studied with a two-dimensional Hamiltonian model that allows both shear and volume deformations. The model is investigated as a function of the relative value of the bulk modulus $B$ with…
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…
Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…
A tilting phase transition is predicted for systems comprising rod like molecules which are irreversibly grafted to a flat surface, so that the non interacting rods are perpendicularly oriented. The transition is controlled by the grafting…
The existence of a finite threshold, the yield stress, for the onset of plastic yielding is a universal feature of plasticity. This jamming-unjamming transition is naturally accounted for by the dynamics of a bistable internal state field.…
(200 words) Oxidation of unsaturated lipids is a fundamental process involved in cell bioenergetics as well as in cell death. Using giant unilamellar vesicles and a chlorin photosensitizer, we asymmetrically oxidized the outer or inner…
During the spreading of epithelial tissues, the advancing tissue front often develops fingerlike protrusions. Their resemblance to traditional viscous fingering patterns in driven fluids suggests that epithelial fingers could arise from an…
Collective epithelial migration leverages on topological rearrangements of the intercellular junctions, which allow cells to intercalate without loosing confluency. In silico studies have provided a clear indication that this process could…
We study the statistical properties of the yielding transition in model amorphous solids in the limit of slow, athermal deformation. Plastic flow occurs via alternating phases of elastic loading punctuated by rapid dissipative events in the…
Cell monolayers and epithelial tissues display slow dynamics during the liquid-glass transitions, a phenomenon with direct relevance to embryogenesis, tumor metastases, and wound healing. In active cells, persistent motion and cell…
We perform large scale simulations of a two dimensional lattice model for amorphous plasticity with random local yield stresses and long-range quadrupolar elastic interactions. We show that as the external stress increases towards the…
We study the phase transition in a class of fiber bundle models in which the fiber strengths are distributed randomly within a finite interval and global load sharing is assumed. The dynamics is expressed as recursion relations for the…
The Kosterlitz-Thouless and the Hexatic phase transitions are celebrated examples of dipole (vortex, dislocation) induced transitions in condensed matter physics. For very clear reasons, these important ``topological" transitions are…
We investigate, using a recently developed model of liquid state theory describing the rheology of dense granular flows, how a yield stress appears in granular matter at the yielding transition. Our model allows us to predict an analytical…
The steady sliding state of periodic structures such as charge density waves and flux line lattices is numerically studied based on two and three dimensional driven random field XY models. We focus on the dynamical phase transition between…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
Motivated by the reported peculiar dynamics of a red blood cell in shear flow, we develop an analytical theory for the motion of a nearly--spherical fluid particle enclosed by a visco--elastic incompressible interface in linear flows. The…
Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…
The yielding transition in amorphous materials, whether driven passively (simple shear) or actively, remains a fundamental open question in soft matter physics. While avalanche statistics at the critical point have been extensively studied,…