Related papers: Cellular Plasticity Model for Bottom-Up Robotic De…
The evolutionary balance between innate and learned behaviors is highly intricate, and different organisms have found different solutions to this problem. We hypothesize that the emergence and exact form of learning behaviors is naturally…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…
Several cellular activities, such as directed cell migration, are coordinated by an intricate network of biochemical reactions which lead to a polarised state of the cell, in which cellular symmetry is broken, causing the cell to have a…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
Taking inspiration from the crawling motion of biological cells on a substrate, we consider a physical model of self-propulsion where the spatio-temporal driving can involve both, a mechanical actuation by active force couples, and a…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
The intratumor heterogeneity has been recognized to characterize cancer cells impairing the efficacy of cancer treatments. We here propose an extension of constraint-based modeling approach in order to simulate metabolism of cell…
Cellular tissue behavior is a multiscale problem. At the cell level, out of equilibrium, biochemical reactions drive physical cell-cell interactions in a typical active matter process. Cell modeling computer simulations are a robust tool to…
Biological systems are notorious for complex behavior within short timescales (e.g. metabolic activity) and longer time scales (e.g. evolutionary selection), along with their complex spatial organization. Because of their complexity and…
The dynamics of cellular pattern formation is crucial for understanding embryonic development and tissue morphogenesis. Recent studies have shown that human dermal fibroblasts cultured on liquid crystal elastomers can exhibit an increase in…
Many patterning events in multi-cellular organisms rely on cell-to-cell contact signaling, such as the Notch pathway in metazoans. A particularly interesting phenomenon in this form of communication is lateral inhibition where a cell that…
We present the results of a self-consistent, unified molecular dynamics study of simple model heteropolymers in the continuum with emphasis on folding, sequence design and the determination of the interaction parameters of the effective…
In this work, we propose novel designs of cellular structures exhibiting unconventional in-plane actuation responses to external stimuli. We strategically introduce stimuli-responsive bilayer bridge films within conventional honeycombs to…
The hematopoietic system has a highly regulated and complex structure in which cells are organized to successfully create and maintain new blood cells. Feedback regulation is crucial to tightly control this system, but the specific…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
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.…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…
Most models of neurons incorporate a capacitor to account for the marked capacitive behavior exhibited by the cell membrane. However, such capacitance is widely considered constant, thereby neglecting the possible effects of time-dependent…