Related papers: Non-bilaterians as Model Systems for Tissue Mechan…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Motor systems show an overall robustness, but because they are highly nonlinear, understanding how they achieve robustness is difficult. In many rhythmic systems, robustness against perturbations involves response of both the shape and the…
A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…
The mechanical properties within living cells play a critical role in the adaptive regulation of their biological functions upon environmental and internal stimuli. While these properties exhibit nonequilibrium dynamics due to the thermal…
Cell-based, mathematical modeling of collective cell behavior has become a prominent tool in developmental biology. Cell-based models represent individual cells as single particles or as sets of interconnected particles, and predict the…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
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.…
Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
The twisting and writhing of a cell body and associated mechanical stresses is an underappreciated constraint on microbial self-propulsion. Multi-flagellated bacteria can even buckle and writhe under their own activity as they swim through…
Cilia are motile biological appendages that are driven to bend by internal shear stresses between tubulin filaments. A continuum model of ciliary material is constructed that incorporates the essential ciliary constraints: (1)…
During development, epithelial tissues undergo extensive morphogenesis based on coordinated changes of cell shape and position over time. Continuum mechanics describes tissue mechanical state and shape changes in terms of strain and stress.…
From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Epithelial tissues are continuously exposed to cyclic stretch. Physiological stretching has been found to regulate soft tissue function at the molecular, cellular, and tissue scales, allowing tissues to preserve their homeostasis and adapt…
The response of cells during spreading and motility is dictated by several multi-physics events, which are triggered by extracellular cues and occur at different time-scales. For this sake, it is not completely appropriate to provide a cell…
Animal cells are both encapsulated and subdivided by lipid bilayer membranes. Beyond just acting as boundaries, these membranes' shapes influence the function of cells and their compartments. Physically, membranes are two-dimensional fluids…
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…