Related papers: Cellular Flow Architecture Exposes the Hidden Mech…
Active fluids, such as cytoskeletal filaments, bacterial colonies and epithelial cell layers, exhibit distinctive orientational coherence, often characterized by nematic order and topological defects. By contrast, little is known about…
Turbulence and chaos play a fundamental role in stellar convective zones through the transportof particles, energy and momentum, and in fast dynamos, through the stretching, twisting and folding of magnetic flux tubes. A particularly…
Certain flow structures trap active microorganisms over extended periods, impacting mortality and growth by inhibiting foraging, exploration, and predator evasion. We show that transport barriers and trapping of a microswimmer in unsteady…
Active flows are central to mixing and transport across living systems. While Newtonian fluids remain laminar, diffusive and predictable at the microscale, living fluids like dense bacterial suspensions can exhibit highly chaotic flows like…
Many complex flows such as those arising from ocean plastics in geophysics or moving cells in biology are characterized by sparse and noisy trajectory datasets. We introduce techniques for identifying Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs)…
During embryonic development, regeneration and homeostasis, cells have to physically integrate into their target tissues, where they ultimately execute their function. Despite a significant body of research on how mechanical forces instruct…
Cells contain elaborate and interconnected networks of protein polymers which make up the cytoskeleton. The cytoskeleton governs the internal positioning and movement of vesicles and organelles, and controls dynamic changes in cell…
Laparoscopy is an electrosurgical medical operation often involving an application of high-frequency alternating current to remove undesired biological tissue from the insufflated abdomen accessible through inlet and outlets trocars. One of…
The cells and tissues that make up our body juggle contradictory mechanical demands. It is crucial for their survival to be able to withstand large mechanical loads, but it is equally crucial for them to produce forces and actively change…
Convergent extension of epithelial tissue is a key motif of animal morphogenesis. On a coarse scale, cell motion resembles laminar fluid flow; yet in contrast to a fluid, epithelial cells adhere to each other and maintain the tissue layer…
We give an algorithmic introduction to Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) using a newly developed computational engine, LCS Tool. LCSs are most repelling, attracting and shearing material lines that form the centerpieces of observed…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…
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.…
We consider Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs) as the boundaries of material subsets whose advective evolution is metastable under weak diffusion. For their detection, we first transform the Eulerian advection-diffusion equation to…
Analysis of Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) has been showed to be a valid mathematical approach to explain the formation of transport barriers in magnetized plasmas. Such LCSs, borrowed from fluid dynamics theory, can be considered as…
Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) -- which include skeletal stem cells -- are a promising tool in regenerative medicine. However, their heterogeneous and unpredictable in vivo behaviour remains a critical barrier preventing the development…
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…
From the perfect radial symmetries of radiolarian mineral skeletons to the broken symmetry of homochirality, the logic of Nature's regularities has fascinated scientists for centuries. Some of Nature's symmetries are clearly visible in…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…