Related papers: Mechano-chemical active feedback generates converg…
A key process in the life of any multicellular organism is its development from a single egg into a full grown adult. The first step in this process often consists of forming a tissue layer out of randomly placed cells on the surface of the…
We develop an agent-based model of vasculogenesis, the de novo formation of blood vessels. Endothelial cells in the vessel network are viewed as linearly elastic spheres and are of two types: vessel elements are contained within the…
Some important biomolecules (for instance, bacterial FtsZ and eukaryotic DNA) are known to posses spontaneous (intrinsic) curvature. Using a simple extension of the wormlike chain model, we study the response of a weakly bending filament in…
The rheological properties of biological tissues, though fundamental to many physiological and pathological processes such as embryonic development, wound healing, and tumor progression, remain poorly understood. A recent study showed that…
Recent studies in mammalian hearts show that left ventricular wall thickening is an important mechanism for systolic ejection and that during contraction the cardiac muscle develops significant stresses in the muscular cross-fiber…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
We show that a viscoelastic thin sheet driven out of equilibrium by active structural remodelling develops a rich variety of shapes as a result of a competition between viscous relaxation and activity. In the regime where active processes…
Epithelial morphogenesis, a signature problem of tissue biology and tissue mechanics, continues to inspire biologists and physicists alike. Many treatments focus on tissue fluidization, apical/basal ratio changes, or mechanical…
Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…
Feedback loops are major components of biochemical systems. Many systems show multiple such (positive or negative) feedback loops. Nevertheless, very few quantitative analyses address the question how such multiple feedback loops evolved.…
Emergence, optimization and stability of a motor-like motion in a fluctuating environment are analyzed. The emergence of motion is shown to be a general phenomenon. A motor converges to the state with the minimum of effective temperature…
Epithelial cell monolayers show remarkable displacement and velocity correlations over distances of ten or more cell sizes that are reminiscent of supercooled liquids and active nematics. We show that many observed features can be described…
Mechanical coupling between a cell and substrate relies on focal adhesions, clusters of adhesion proteins linking stress fibers (bundles of actin proteins) inside the cell with surrounding tissue. Focal adhesions have been demonstrated to…
Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and myosin-dependent contraction can generate elastic stress and strain in living tissues, which may be dissipated by internal rearrangement through cell topological transition and cytoskeletal reorganization.…
Understanding how living organisms spontaneously develop complex functional structures inspires innovative approaches in engineering design. Here, we introduce a decentralized generative model based on morphogenesis to autonomously grow…
Adhesion-dependent cells actively sense the mechanical properties of their environment through mechanotransductory processes at focal adhesions, which are integrin-based contacts connecting the extracellular matrix to the cytoskeleton. Here…
We propose a two-scale model to resolve essential features of developmental tissue deformations. The model couples individual cellular behavior to the mechanics at tissue scale. This is realized by a multiphase-field model addressing the…
Several models have been proposed to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues undergoing morphogenetic changes driven by apical constriction pulses, which differ in where the constriction is applied, either at the perimeter or medial…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Cellular self-assembly and organization are fundamental steps for the development of biological tissues. In this paper, within the framework of a cellular automata model, we address how an ordered tissue pattern spontaneously emerges from a…