Related papers: Mechanics promotes coherence in heterogeneous acti…

The mechanical integrity of arteries is of prime importance, for a proper oxygen and nutrients delivery to all organs. To optimize their mechanical properties, healthy arteries exhibit a complex hierarchical microstructure which ensures a…

While mechanobiology has demonstrated that precise control over mechanical properties at the whole-cell level is crucial for many biological functions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the intracellular mechanical properties.…

The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…

The nature of emergent collective behaviors of moving physical agents interacting with their neighborhood is a long-standing open issue in physical and biological systems alike. This calls for studies on the control of synchronization and…

In many biological systems localized mechanical information is transmitted by mechanically neutral chemical signals. Typical examples include contraction waves in acto-myosin cortex at cellular scale and peristaltic waves at tissue level.…

In this paper we study the emergence of coherence in collective motion described by a system of interacting motiles endowed with an inner, adaptative, steering mechanism. By means of a nonlinear parametric coupling, the system elements are…

In a computational study we reveal a novel dynamical instability of excitation waves in the heartmuscle. The instability manifests itself as gradual local increase in the duration of the actionpotential which causes formation and…

Recent studies in mammalian hearts show that left ventricular wall thickening is an important mechanism for systolic ejection and that during contraction the cardiac muscle develops significant stresses in the muscular cross-fiber…

Cells are dynamic systems characterized by temporal variations in biophysical properties such as stiffness and contractility. Recent studies show that the recruitment and release of actin filaments into and out of the cell cortex - a…

We identify the dynamical heterogeneities as an essential prerequisite for stretched exponential relaxation in dynamically frustrated systems. This heterogeneity takes the form of ordered domains of finite but diverging lifetime for…

Mounting evidence shows that oscillatory activity is widespread in cell signaling. Here we review some of this recent evidence, focusing on both the molecular mechanisms that potentially underlie such dynamical behavior, and the potential…

We reveal that the mechanical pulsation of locally synchronised particles is a generic route to propagate deformation waves. We consider a model of dense repulsive particles whose activity drives periodic change in size of each individual.…

All cells must keep time to consistently perform vital biological functions. To that end, the coupling and interrelatedness of diverse subsecond events in the complex cellular environment, such as protein folding or translation rates,…

Spontaneous synchronization is a general phenomenon in which a large population of coupled oscillators of diverse natural frequencies self-organize to operate in unison. The phenomenon occurs in physical and biological systems over a wide…

Bacteria can spontaneously develop collective motions by aligning their motions in dense systems. Here, we show that bacteria can also respond collectively to an alternating electrical field and form dynamic clusters oscillating at the same…

Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…

Cilia and flagella in biological systems often show large scale cooperative behaviors such as the synchronization of their beats in "metachronal waves". These are beautiful examples of emergent dynamics in biology, and are essential for…

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…

The emergence of a body axis is a fundamental step in the development of multicellular organisms. In simple systems such as $\textit{Hydra}$, growing evidence suggests that mechanical forces generated by collective cellular activity play a…

Swarming or collective motion of living entities is one of the most common and spectacular manifestations of living systems having been extensively studied in recent years. A number of general principles have been established. The…