Related papers: Geometric Effects in Large Scale Intracellular Flo…
Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…
Droplet-based microfluidics systems have become widely used in recent years thanks to their advantages, varying from the possibility of handling small fluid volumes to directly synthesizing and encapsulating various living forms for…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
Many cells exhibit large-scale active circulation of their entire fluid contents, a process termed cytoplasmic streaming. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in plant cells, often presenting strikingly regimented flow patterns. The…
Deformations of cell sheets during morphogenesis are driven by developmental processes such as cell division and cell shape changes. In morphoelastic shell theories of development, these processes appear as variations of the intrinsic…
Friction at the endwalls of partially-filled horizontal rotating tumblers induces curvature and axial drift of particle trajectories in the surface flowing layer. Here we describe the results of a detailed discrete element method study of…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
Fluid transport networks are important in many natural settings and engineering applications, from animal cardiovascular and respiratory systems to plant vasculature to plumbing networks and chemical plants. Understanding how network…
We use a theoretical approach to examine the effect of a radial fluid flow or electric current on the growth and homeostasis of a cell spheroid. Such conditions may be generated by a drain of micrometric diameter. To perform this analysis,…
We investigate the hydrodynamic stability and the formation of patterns in a continuum model of epithelial layers, able to account for the interplay between mechanical activity, lateral adhesion and the $6-$fold orientational order…
The shape of a cell influences and it is influenced by interactions with its neighbouring partners. Here, we introduce a coarse-grained model of non-reciprocal interactions between single-cell organisms to study emergent morphologies during…
The deformability of vesicles critically influences their engulfment by lipid membranes, a process central to endocytosis, viral entry, drug delivery, and intercellular transport. While theoretical models have long predicted this influence,…
Blood exhibits a heterogeneous nature of hematocrit, velocity, and effective viscosity in microcapillaries. Microvascular bifurcations have a significant influence on the distribution of the blood cells and blood flow behavior. This paper…
In the Drosophila melanogaster egg chamber, the collective migration of border cells toward the oocyte is guided by spatial gradients of chemoattractants. While cellular responses to these cues are well characterized, the spatial…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Cell fate decisions emerge as a consequence of a complex set of gene regulatory networks. Models of these networks are known to have more parameters than data can determine. Recent work, inspired by Waddington's metaphor of a landscape, has…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
Cellular structures must organize themselves within strict physical constraints, operating with finite resources and well-defined boundaries. Classical systems demonstrate only passive responses to boundaries, from surface energy…
As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively, whereas variation of shape from cell-to-cell is dismissed most…