Related papers: Statistical physics of active matter, cell divisio…
This article is an invitation. It is, first, an invitation to consider as a subject worthy of attention the wide range of situations where small discrete elements, either bubbles, droplets or solid particles, are embedded in turbulent…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
Ordered chains (such as chains of amino acids) are ubiquitous in biological cells, and these chains perform specific functions contingent on the sequence of their components. Using the existence and general properties of such sequences as a…
We formulate a method for incorporating quantum fluctuations into molecular- dynamics simulations of many-body systems, such as those employed for energetic nuclear collision processes. Based on Fermi's Golden Rule, we allow spontaneous…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
This thesis focuses on the applications of mathematical tools and concepts brought from nonequilibrium statistical physics to the modeling of ecological problems. The first part provides a short introduction where the theoretical concepts…
In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…
We investigate proteins within heterogeneous cell membranes where non-equilibrium phenomena arises from spatial variations in concentration and temperature. We develop simulation methods building on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to…
The study of cells' dynamical properties is essential to a better understanding of several physiological processes. These properties are directly associated with cells' mechanical parameters experimentally achieved through physical stress.…
Friction is central to the motion of active (self-propelled) objects such as bacteria, animals, and robots. While in a viscous fluid friction is described by Stokes's law, objects in contact with other solid bodies are often governed by…
If a porous media is being damaged by excessive stress, the elastic matrix at every infinitesimal volume separates into a 'solid' and a 'broken' component. The 'solid' part is the one that is capable of transferring stress, whereas the…
Statistical mechanics is a powerful framework for analyzing optimization yielding analytical results for matching, optimal transport, and other combinatorial problems. However, these methods typically target the zero-temperature limit,…
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…
How can dense biological tissue maintain sharp boundaries between coexisting cell populations? We explore this question within a simple vertex model for cells, focusing on the role of topology and tissue surface tension. We show that the…
Lecture Notes for Les Houches 2018 Summer School on Active Matter and Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics. These notes give an introduction to statistical field theories of active matter. After showing an example of how such theories can be…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
By combining methods of kinetic and density functional theory, we present a description of molecular fluids which accounts for their microscopic structure and thermodynamic properties as well as for the hydrodynamic behavior. We focus on…
The living cell expends energetic and material resources to reliably process information from its environment. To do so, it utilises unreliable molecular circuitry that is subject to thermal and other fluctuations. Here, we argue that…
The statistical mechanical description of small systems staying in thermal equilibrium with an environment can be achieved by means of the Hamiltonian of mean force. In contrast to the reduced density matrix of an open quantum system, or…
When soft matter is driven out of equilibrium its constituents interact via effective interactions that escape Newton's action-reaction principle. Prominent examples include the hydrodynamic interactions between colloidal particles driven…