Related papers: Active shape control by plants in dynamic environm…

The vertex model is widely used to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues, because of its simplicity and versatility and the direct inclusion of biophysical parameters. Here, it is shown that quite generally, when cells modify their…

Active soft bodies can affect their shape through an internal actuation mechanism that induces a deformation. Similar to recent work, this paper utilizes a differentiable, quasi-static, and physics-based simulation layer to optimize for…

A phenomenological model of human posture control is posited. The dynamics are modelled as an elastically pinned polymer under the influence of noise. The model accurately reproduces the two-point correlation functions of experimental…

Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…

Biological motor control provides highly effective solutions to difficult control problems in spite of the complexity of the plant and the significant delays in sensory feedback . Such delays are expected to lead to non trivial stability…

Epithelial tissues act as barriers and, therefore, must repair themselves, respond to environmental changes and grow without compromising their integrity. Consequently, they exhibit complex viscoelastic rheological behavior where…

How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…

During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…

Ratcheting surfaces are a common motif in nature and appear in plant awns and grasses. They are known to profer selective advantages for seed dispersion and burial. In two simple model experiments we show that these anisotropically toothed…

The three-dimensional shapes of thin lamina such as leaves, flowers, feathers, wings etc, are driven by the differential strain induced by the relative growth. The growth takes place through variations in the Riemannian metric, given on the…

Fish swim by undulating their bodies. These propulsive motions require coordinated shape changes of a body that interacts with its fluid environment, but the specific shape coordination that leads to robust turning and swimming motions…

To develop a minimal model for a cell moving in a crowded environment such as in tissue, we investigate the response of a liquid drop of active matter moving on a flat rigid substrate to forces applied at its boundaries. We consider two…

Morphogenesis involves complex shape changes of biological tissues. Yet, tissue shape changes depend on tissue rheology, which in turn arises from the interplay of large numbers of cells. Here, we link cell- and tissue-scale mechanics by…

The polarisation of cells and tissues is fundamental for tissue morphogenesis during biological development and regeneration. A deeper understanding of biological polarity pattern formation can be gained from the consideration of pattern…

Models for fluid deformable surfaces provide valid theories to describe the dynamics of thin fluidic sheets of soft materials. To use such models in morphogenesis and development requires to incorporate active forces. We consider active…

Motivated by a case study of vegetation patterns, we introduce a mixture model with concomitant variables to examine the association between the orientation of vegetation stripes and wind direction. The proposal relies on a novel…

This paper provides new results for a tracking control of the attitude dynamics of a rigid body. Both of the attitude dynamics and the proposed control system are globally expressed on the special orthogonal group, to avoid complexities and…

Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…

Living plants, while contributing to ecological balance and climate regulation, also function as natural sensors capable of transmitting information about their internal physiological states and surrounding conditions. This rich source of…

We investigate a continuum mechanical model for an adherent cell on two dimensional adhesive micropatterned substrates. The cell is modeled as an isotropic and homogeneous elastic material subject to uniform internal contractile stresses.…