Related papers: Modelling bulk mechanical effects in a planar cell…
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…
Epithelial tissues are driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium by internally generated forces, causing complex patterns of motion. Even when both the forces and motion are measurable, it is not yet possible to relate the two, because the…
We explore the diversity of warped metric function in five-dimensional gravity including a scalar field and a 3-brane. We point out that the form of the function is determined by a parameter introduced here. For a particular value of the…
Cells in an epithelial monolayer coordinate motion with their neighbors giving rise to collectively moving packs of sizes spanning multiple cell diameters. The physical mechanism controlling the pack size, however, remains unclear. A…
We use coarse-grained Monte Carlo simulations to study the elastic properties of charged membranes in solutions of monovalent and pentavalent counterions. The simulation results of the two cases reveal trends opposite to each other. The…
Using some simple toy models, we explore the nature of the brane-bulk interaction for cosmological models with a large extra dimension. We are in particular interested in understanding the role of the bulk gravitons, which from the point of…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…
A two-dimensional mathematical model for cells migrating without adhesion capabilities is presented and analyzed. Cells are represented by their cortex, which is modelled as an elastic curve, subject to an internal pressure force. Net…
Heterogeneity in biological molecules, resulting in molecule-to-molecule variations in their dynamics and function, is an emerging theme. To elucidate the consequences of heterogeneous behavior at the single molecule level, we propose an…
Continuum modeling of a free-standing graphene monolayer, viewed as a two dimensional 2-lattice, requires specifications of the components of the shift vector that act as an auxiliary variable. The field equations are then the equations…
We adopt a Quality by Design (QbD) paradigm to better control the mechanical properties of tablets. To this end, the effect of particle size distribution, lubricant concentration, and mixing time on the tensile strength and elastic modulus…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
The mechanics of a foam typically depends on the bubble geometry, topology, and the material at hand, be it metallic or polymeric, for example. While the foam energy functional for each bubble is typically minimization of surface area for a…
The quasistatic behavior of a simple 2D model of a cohesive powder under isotropic loads is investigated by Discrete Element simulations. The loose packing states, as studied in a previous paper, undergo important structural changes under…
Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…
Developing epithelial tissues coordinate cell proliferation and mechanical forces to achieve proper size and shape. As epithelial cells tightly adhere together to form the confluent tissue, the distribution of cell areas significantly…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…
We review continuum elastic models for the transmission of both external forces and internal active cellular forces in biopolymer gels, and relate them to recent experiments. Rather than being exhaustive, we focus on continuum elastic…
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,…
Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the deformation behavior of disperse polymer melts by tracking test chains of length N = Mw, the weight average molecular weight, in melts of varying dispersity. At high strain…