Related papers: Cell jamming and unjamming in development: physica…
Active particle assemblies can exhibit a wide range of interesting dynamical phases depending on internal parameters such as density, adhesion strength or self-propulsion. Active self-rotations are rarely studied in this context, although…
Directed collective cell migration is central in morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression1,2. Although it is well-accepted that the molecular anisotropy of the micro-environment guides this migration3,4, its impact on the pattern…
As wounds heal, embryos develop, cancer spreads, or asthma progresses, the cellular monolayer undergoes glass transition between solid-like jammed and fluid-like flowing states. During some of these processes, the cells undergo an…
In this work we provide an overview of jamming transitions in two dimensional systems focusing on the limit of frictionless particle interactions in the absence of thermal fluctuations. We first discuss jamming in systems with short range…
A theory is constructed to describe the zero-temperature jamming transition as the density of repulsive soft spheres is increased. Local mechanical stability imposes a constraint on the minimum number of bonds per particle; we argue that…
Cell migration is an indispensable physiological and pathological process for normal tissue development and cancer metastasis, which is greatly regulated by intracellular signal pathways and extracellular microenvironment (ECM). However,…
A wide variety of interacting particle assemblies driven by an external force are characterized by a transition between a blocked and a moving phase. The origin of this deblocking transition can be traced back to the presence of either…
We present a stochastic model which describes fronts of cells invading a wound. In the model cells can move, proliferate, and experience cell-cell adhesion. We find several qualitatively different regimes of front motion and analyze the…
As the cover of embryos and adult organisms, epithelial tissues are subjected to substantial mechanical forces in tissue morphogenesis. However, the finite deformation behaviors of epithelial tissues remain largely unexplored. This study…
Collective motion is a phenomenon observed across length scales in nature, from bacterial swarming and tissue migration to the flocking of animals. The mechanisms underlying this behavior vary significantly depending on the biological…
Cycling tissues such as the intestinal epithelium, germ line, and hair follicles, require a constant flux of differentiated cells. These tissues are maintained by a population of stem cells, which generate differentiated progenies and…
Discrete numerical simulations are performed to study the evolution of the micro-structure and the response of a granular packing during successive loading-unloading cycles, consisting of quasi-static rotations in the gravity field between…
During epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), epithelial cells change their morphology, disperse, and gain mesenchymal-like characteristics. Usually, cells are categorized into discrete cell types or states based on gene expression and…
Current biological knowledge supports the existence of a secondary group of cancer cells within the body of the tumour that exhibits stem cell-like properties. These cells are termed Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs}, and as opposed to the more…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Migration of cells can be characterized by two, prototypical types of motion: individual and collective migration. We propose a statistical-inference approach designed to detect the presence of cell-cell interactions that give rise to…
Treating the epithelium as an incompressible fluid adjacent to a viscoelastic stroma, we find a novel hydrodynamic instability that leads to the formation of protrusions of the epithelium into the stroma. This instability is a candidate for…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Jamming is a fundamental transition that governs the mechanical behavior of particulate media, including sand, foam and dense suspensions but also biological tissues: Upon compression, particulate media can change from freely flowing to a…
Left-right axis specification establishes embryonic laterality through asymmetric signaling cascades originating at the cellular scale. We previously reported the presence of a directionality bias in confined pairs of endothelial (and…