Related papers: Actuation of Cell Sheets in 3D
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
Active nematics are the nonequilibrium analog of passive liquid crystals in which anisotropic units consume free energy to drive emergent behavior. Similar to liquid crystal (LC) molecules in displays, ordering and dynamics in active…
We propose a three dimensional mechanical model of embryonic tissue dynamics. Mechanically coupled adherent cells are represented as particles interconnected with elastic beams which can exert non-central forces and torques. Tissue…
Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…
To insight the relationships between the self-organizing structures of cells, such as the cell clusters, and the properties of biotissues is helpful in revealing the function and designing biomaterial. Traditional random foam model neglects…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
We investigate morphologies of proliferating cellular tissues using a newly developed numerical simulation model for mechanical cell division and migration in 2D. The model is applied to a bimodal mixture consisting of stiff cells with a…
Mesoscale molecular assemblies on the cell surface, such as cilia and filopodia, integrate information, control transport and amplify signals. Synthetic devices mimicking these structures could sensitively monitor these cellular functions…
Biomembranes play a central role in various phenomena like locomotion of cells, cell-cell interactions, packaging of nutrients, and in maintaining organelle morphology and functionality. During these processes, the membranes undergo…
We theoretically explore fluidization of epithelial tissues by active T1 neighbor exchanges. We show that the geometry of cell-cell junctions encodes important information about the local features of the energy landscape, which we support…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
Biomaterials are becoming an essential tool in the study and application of stem cell research. Various types of biomaterials enable three-dimensional (3D) culture of stem cells, and, more recently, also enable high-resolution patterning…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
We numerically investigate how spatial variations of extensile or contractile active stress affect bulk active nematic systems in two and three dimensions. In the absence of defects, activity gradients drive flows which re-orient the…
Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Active nematics are microscopically driven liquid crystals that exhibit dynamical steady states characterized by the creation and annihilation of topological defects. Motivated by experimental realizations of such systems made of biopolymer…