Related papers: Single and two-cells shape analysis from energy fu…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
Functionals involving surface curvature are important across a range of scientific disciplines, and their extrema are representative of physically meaningful objects such as atomic lattices and biomembranes. Inspired in particular by the…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
Mechanochemical processes on surfaces such as the cellular cortex or epithelial sheets, play a key role in determining patterns and shape changes of biological systems. To understand the complex interplay of hydrodynamics and material flows…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
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,…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
We theoretically explore fluidization of epithelial tissues by active T1 neighbor exchanges. We show that the geometry of cell-cell junctions encodes important information about the local features of the energy landscape, which we support…
We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
We consider the impact of surface hydrodynamics on the interplay between curvature and composition in coarsening processes on model systems for biomembranes. This includes scaling laws and equilibrium configurations, which are investigated…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
Simple models for spherical particles with a soft shell have been shown to self-assemble into numerous crystal phases and even quasicrystals. However, most of these models rely on a simple pairwise interaction, which is usually a valid…
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
The architecture has its basis in a dialectic search of new choices of representation. We deal with the form on the contemporary architecture under two approaches: expression and content. We examine how mathematical principles based on…
An elastic surface model is investigated by using the canonical Monte Carlo simulation technique on triangulated spherical meshes. The model undergoes a first-order collapsing transition and a continuous surface fluctuation transition. The…
The origin of rigidity in disordered materials is an outstanding open problem in statistical physics. Previously, a class of 2D cellular models has been shown to undergo a rigidity transition controlled by a mechanical parameter that…
The vertex model is a popular framework for modelling tightly packed biological cells, such as confluent epithelia. Cells are described by convex polygons tiling the plane and their equilibrium is found by minimizing a global mechanical…