Related papers: Collective synchrony in confluent, pulsatile epith…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Spatial self-similarity is a hallmark of critical phenomena. We study the dynamic process of percolation, in which bonds are incrementally added to an initially empty lattice until the system becomes fully occupied. By tracking the gap --…
Coherent angular rotation of epithelial cells is thought to contribute to many vital physiological processes including tissue morphogenesis and glandular formation. However, factors regulating this motion, and the implications of this…
One of the most salient spatio-temporal patterns in population ecology is the synchronization of fluctuating local populations across vast spatial extent. Synchronization of abundance has been widely observed across a range of spatial…
Numerous biological systems exhibit transitions to synchronised oscillations via a population-density-dependant mechanism known as quorum sensing. Here we propose a model system, based on spatially distributed limit-cycle oscillators, that…
In vitro epithelial monolayers exhibit a rich repertoire of collective dynamical behaviours according to microenvironment mechanical features. We investigate the statistical and dynamical properties of human bronchial epithelial cell (HBEC)…
Motile eukaryotic cells display distinct modes of migration that often occur within the same cell type. It remains unclear, however, whether transitions between the migratory modes require changes in external conditions, or whether the…
Within developing embryos, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as short as minutes. This includes epithelial tissues, which often narrow and elongate in convergent extension movements due to anisotropies in external…
Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is important to…
Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…
Oscillatory biochemical signals and mechanical forces must coordinate robustly during development, yet the principles governing their mutual coupling remain poorly understood. In syncytial embryos and cell-free extracts, mitotic waves…
We study synchronization of locally coupled noisy phase oscillators which move diffusively in a one-dimensional ring. Together with the disordered and the globally synchronized states, the system also exhibits several wave-like states which…
Many cell types display random motility on two-dimensional substrates, but crawl persistently in a single direction when confined in a microchannel or on an adhesive micropattern. Does this imply that the motility mechanism of confined…
Social media are transforming global communication and coordination and provide unprecedented opportunities for studying socio-technical domains. Here we study global dynamical patterns of communication on Twitter across many scales.…
Collective behavior in cellular populations is coordinated by biochemical signaling networks within individual cells. Connecting the dynamics of these intracellular networks to the population phenomena they control poses a considerable…
Collective cell migration in cohesive units is vital for tissue morphogenesis, wound repair, and immune response. While the fundamental driving forces for collective cell motion stem from contractile and protrusive activities of individual…
Swarming or collective motion of living entities is one of the most common and spectacular manifestations of living systems having been extensively studied in recent years. A number of general principles have been established. The…
The idea of a metapopulation has become canonical in ecology. Its original mean field form provides the important intuition that migration and extinction interact to determine the dynamics of a population composed of subpopulations. From…
Directed collective cell migration is central in morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression1,2. Although it is well-accepted that the molecular anisotropy of the micro-environment guides this migration3,4, its impact on the pattern…
A variety of living and non-living systems exhibit collective motion. From swarm robotics to bacterial swarms, and tissue wound healing to human crowds, examples of collective motion are highly diverse but all of them share the common…