Related papers: Controlling the morphologies and dynamics in three…
Cells achieve size homeostasis by regulating their division timing based on their size, added size, and cell cycle time. Previous research under steady-state conditions demonstrated the robustness of these mechanisms. However, their dynamic…
Recent advancements in the ability to construct three-dimensional (3D) tissues and organoids from stem cells and biomaterials have not only opened abundant new research avenues in disease modeling and regenerative medicine but also have…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
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…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Diffusion in living tissues governs essential physiological processes and is well studied within cells. Yet how extracellular molecular motion emerges from the structural complexity of tissues remains unresolved. In the brain, molecules…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
Molecular transport maintains cellular structures and functions. For example, lipid and protein diffusion sculpts the dynamic shapes and structures on the cell membrane that perform essential cellular functions, such as cell signaling.…
Recent experiments by Kantsler et. al. (2007) have shown that the relaxational dynamics of a vesicle in external elongation flow is accompanied by the formation of wrinkles on a membrane. Motivated by these experiments we present a theory…
Microstructural changes in solids, driven by energy flows, do not develop in a static continuous space, such as the space considered in conventional plasticity models. The applied forces create an evolving internal energy landscape, which…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Cell competition is a quality control mechanism in tissues that results in the elimination of less fit cells. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of cell competition has been identified in many physiological and pathological contexts,…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
Cell mechanical properties are fundamental to the organism but remain poorly understood. We report a comprehensive phenomenological framework for the nonlinear rheology of single fibroblast cells: a superposition of elastic stiffening and…
Self-regulation of living tissue as an example of self-organization phenomena in active fractal systems of biological, ecological, and social nature is under consideration. The characteristic feature of these systems is the absence of any…
Cellular cortex, which is a highly viscous thin cytoplasmic layer just below the cell membrane, controls the cell's mechanical properties, which can be characterized by a hydrodynamic length scale $\ell$. Cells actively regulate $\ell$ via…
It is shown that the dynamics of a two-dimensional crystal with a finite concentration of dislocations, as well as vacancy and interstitial defects, is governed by the hydrodynamic equations of a viscoelastic medium. At the longest length…
Numerous physical models have been proposed to explain how cell motility emerges from internal activity, mostly focused on how crawling motion arises from internal processes. Here we offer a classification of self-propulsion mechanisms…
Cell membrane tension directly influences various cellular functions. In this study, we developed a method to estimate surface tension from time-series data. We obtained the curvature-velocity relationship from time-series of binarized cell…