Related papers: Rigidity of Epithelial Tissues as a Double Optimiz…
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), and the corresponding reverse process, Mesenchymal-Epithelial Transition (MET), are dynamic and reversible cellular programs orchestrated by many changes at biochemical and morphological levels. A…
The vertex model with homogeneous cell properties is known to exhibit a parameter degeneracy in which the system's dynamics is independent of the target area. Here, we show, for the heterogeneous vertex model where cells differ in size and…
Vertex models have been extensively used for simulating the evolution of multicellular systems, and have given rise to important global properties concerning their macroscopic rheology or jamming transitions. These models are based on the…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
We measure different contributions to entropy production in a living functional epithelial tissue. We do this by extracting the functional dynamics of development while at the same time quantifying fluctuations. Using the translucent…
In vivo and in vitro cells rely on the support of an underlying biocompatible substrate, such as the extracellular matrix or a culture substrate, to spread and proliferate. The mechanical and chemical properties of such structures play a…
We study a shape evolution framework in which the deformation of shapes from time t to t + dt is governed by a regularized anisotropic elasticity model. More precisely, we assume that at each time shapes are infinitesimally deformed from a…
The maintenance of tissue and organ structures during dynamic homeostasis is often not well understood. In order for a system to be stable, cell renewal, cell migration and cell death must be finely balanced. Moreover, a tissue's shape must…
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…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
The conditions under which biological cells switch from a static to a motile state are fundamental to the understanding of many healthy and pathological processes. In this paper, we show that even in the presence of a fully symmetric…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
Amorphous materials exhibit complex material proprteties with strongly nonlinear behaviors. Below a yield stress they behave as plastic solids, while they start to yield above a critical stress $\Sigma_c$. A key quantity controlling…
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,…
Across development, the morphology of fluid-filled lumina enclosed by epithelial tissues arises from an interplay of lumen pressure, mechanics of the cell cortex, and cell-cell adhesion. Here, we explore the mechanical basis for the control…
Growth and folding in one-layered model tissue sheets are studied in a stochastic, lattice-free single cell model which considers the discrete cellular structure of the tissue, and a coarse grained analytical approach. The polarity of the…
We study the vertex model for epithelial tissue mechanics extended to include coupling between the cell shapes and tensions in cell-cell junctions. This coupling represents an active force which drives the system out of equilibrium and…