Related papers: How does an embedded spheroid affect the rigidity …
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
Vertex Models, as used to describe cellular tissue, have an energy controlled by deviations of each cell area and perimeter from target values. The constrained nonlinear relation between area and perimeter leads to new mechanical response.…
Photoelasticity is employed to investigate the stress state near stiff rectangular and rhombohedral inclusions embedded in a 'soft' elastic plate. Results show that the singular stress field predicted by the linear elastic solution for the…
Bundles of polymer filaments are responsible for the rich and unique mechanical behaviors of many biomaterials, including cells and extracellular matrices. In fibrin biopolymers, whose nonlinear elastic properties are crucial for normal…
This paper presents a combined numerical-theoretical study of the macroscopic behavior and local field distributions in a special class of two-dimensional periodic composites with viscoplastic phases. The emphasis is on strongly nonlinear…
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 effect of AC electric fields on the elasticity of supported lipid bilayers has been investigated at the microscopic level using grazing incidence synchrotron x-ray scattering. A strong decrease in the membrane tension up to 1mN/m and a…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
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…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
We consider a sharp interface kinetic model of phase transitions accompanied by elastic strain, together with its phase-field realization. Quantitative results for the steady-state growth of a new phase in a strip geometry are obtained and…
In a diversity of physiological contexts, eukaryotic cells adhere to an extracellular matrix (ECM), a disordered network with complex nonlinear mechanics. Such cells can perform mechanosensation: using local force probing they can measure…
Morphological instabilities of growing tissues that impinge on passive materials are typical of invasive cancers. To explain these instabilities in experiments on breast epithelial spheroids in an extracellular matrix, we develop a…
Internally generated active stresses drive soft materials into architectures inaccessible to thermal self-assembly. We use a microtubule-based active fluid to assemble and irreversibly restructure actin-fascin networks. Subsequently, we…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…
Many mechanical structures, both engineered and biological, combine heavy rigid elements such as bones and beams with lightweight flexible ones such as cables and membranes. These are referred to as tensegrities, reflecting that cables can…
Soft composite solids, comprising discrete inclusions embedded within a compliant matrix, are emerging candidates for engineering synthetic tissues and soft robotic materials. Current strategies for controlling their nonlinear mechanics,…
Fibrous networks are ideal functional materials since they provide mechanical rigidity at low weight. Such structures are omnipresent in natural biomaterials from cells to tissues, as well as in man-made materials from polymeric composites…
Biopolymer networks from the intracellular to tissue scale display high rigidity and tensile stress while having coordinations well below the normal threshold for mechanical rigidity. The elastic filaments in these networks are often…