Related papers: Cell Division and Motility Enable Hexatic Order in…
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…
A dynamic model for cell differentiation is studied, where cells with internal chemical reaction dynamics interact with each other and replicate. It leads to spontaneous differentiation of cells and determination, as is discussed in the…
We introduce the notion of cell division-induced activity and show that the cell division generates extensile forces and drives dynamical patterns in cell assemblies. Extending the hydrodynamic models of lyotropic active nematics we…
Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
The hexatic fluid refers to a phase in between a solid and a liquid which has short range positional order but quasi-long range orientational order. In the celebrated theory of Berezinskii, Kosterlitz and Thouless and subsequently refined…
Two-dimensional (2D) mechanical models of confluent tissues have related the mechanical state of a monolayer of cells to the average perimeter length of the cell cross sections, predicting floppiness or rigidity of the material. For the…
Collective cell migration is a key driver of embryonic development, wound healing, and some types of cancer invasion. Here we provide a physical perspective of the mechanisms underlying collective cell migration. We begin with a catalogue…
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…
Biological processes, from morphogenesis to tumor invasion, spontaneously generate shear stresses inside living tissue. The mechanisms that govern the transmission of mechanical forces in epithelia and the collective response of the tissue…
Interstitial fluid flow is a feature of many solid tumours. In vitro Experiments have shown that such fluid flow can direct tumour cell movement upstream or downstream depending on the balance between the competing mechanisms of tensotaxis…
Active materials, composed of internally driven particles, have properties that are qualitatively distinct from matter at thermal equilibrium. However, the most spectacular departures from equilibrium phase behaviour are thought to be…
Molecular sorting in biological membranes is essential for proper cellular function. It also plays a crucial role in the budding of enveloped viruses from host cells. We recently proposed that this process is driven by phase separation,…
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…
T1 transitions, which are localised cell rearrangements, play an important role in the fluidization of epithelial monolayers. Using a multi-phase field model and an active elastic solid model, we show that although each cell undergoes T1…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of 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…
We address the folding induced by differential growth in soft layered solids via an elementary model that consists of a soft growing neo-Hookean elastic layer adhered to a deep elastic substrate. As the layer/substrate modulus ratio is…
Recent advances in cold atom experimentation suggest that studies of quantum two-dimensional melting of dipolar molecules, with dipoles aligned perpendicular to ordering plane, may be on the horizon. An intriguing aspect of this problem is…