Related papers: Strain rate controls alignment in growing bacteria…
Ever since the ground breaking work of Trepat et al. in 2009, we know that cell colonies growing on a substrate can be under tensile mechanical stress. The origin of tension has so far been attributed to cellular motility forces being…
Many models have been developed to study the role of branching actin networks in motility. One important component of those models is the distribution of filament orientations relative to the cell membrane. Two mean-field models previously…
In this paper, we develop a mean-field model for simulating the microstructure evolution of crystalline materials during static recrystallization. The model considers a population of individual cells (i.e. grains and subgrains) growing in a…
The newly-discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal exhibits a variety of unique defect phenomena. The depolarization field in the material favors spontaneous spatial variations in polarization, manifesting in diverse forms such as…
The rheology of biological tissue plays an important role in many processes, from organ formation to cancer invasion. Here, we use a multi-phase field model of motile cells to simulate active microrheology within a tissue monolayer. When…
We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…
The extraordinary mechanical properties of 2D TMDCs make them ideal candidates for investigating strain-induced control of various physical properties. Here we explore the role of non-uniform strain in modulating optical, electronic and…
We study the collective dynamics of elongated swimmers in a very thin fluid layer by devising long, filamentous, non-tumbling bacteria. The strong confinement induces weak nematic alignment upon collision, which, for large enough density of…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
A thin-walled tube, e.g., a drinking straw, manifests an instability when bent by localizing the curvature change in a small region. This instability has been extensively studied since the seminal work of Brazier nearly a century ago.…
Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…
Colonies of bacteria grown on thin agar plate exhibit fractal patterns as a result of adaptation to their environments. The bacterial colony pattern formation is regulated crucially by chemotaxis, the movement of cells along a chemical…
Arabidopsis roots show oscillatory growth patterns on homogeneous agar surfaces, whereas other plants, such as maize, do not. Although several explanations have been proposed, a simple and general model that makes testable predictions…
In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…
Recent experiments have illuminated a remarkable growth mechanism of rod-shaped bacteria: proteins associated with cell wall extension move at constant velocity in circles oriented approximately along the cell circumference (Garner et al.,…
Directed growth, anisotropic cell shapes, and confinement drive self-organization in multicellular systems. We investigate the influence of particle shape on the distribution and dynamics of nematic microdomains in a minimal in-silico model…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…