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Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
When cell sheets fold during development, their apical or basal surfaces constrict and cell shapes approach the geometric singularity in which these surfaces vanish. Here, we reveal the mechanical consequences of this geometric singularity…
Many biological tissues are viscoelastic, behaving as elastic solids on short timescales and fluids on long timescales. This collective mechanical behavior enables and helps to guide pattern formation and tissue layering. Here we…
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…
Biological cells embedded in fibrous matrices have been observed to form inter-cellular bands of dense and aligned fibers, through which they mechanically interact over long distances. Such matrix-mediated cellular interactions have been…
A theoretical model for stratified epithelium is presented. The viscoelastic properties of the tissue is assumed to be dependent on the spatial distribution of proliferative and differentiated cells. Based on this assumption, a hydrodynamic…
The alignment of cell-cell junctions and associated cortical actomyosin across multiple cells to form supracellular cables in an epithelium is an example of the long range tissue organization that drives morphogenesis. Here we demonstrate…
Microswimmers such as E. Coli bacteria accumulate and exhibit an intriguing dynamics near walls, governed by hydrodynamic and steric interactions. Insight into the underlying mechanisms and predominant interactions demand a detailed…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
We derive a continuum mechanical model to capture the morphological changes occurring at the pretumoral stage of epithelial tissues. The proposed model aims to investigate the competition between the bulk elasticity of the epithelium and…
Tissue remodelling in diverse developmental contexts require cell shape changes that have been associated with pulsation and flow of the actomyosin cytoskeleton. Here we describe the dynamics of the actomyosin cytoskeleton as a confined…
The elastic backbone is the set of all shortest paths. We found a new phase transition at $p_{eb}$ above the classical percolation threshold at which the elastic backbone becomes dense. At this transition in $2d$ its fractal dimension is…
Dorsal closure is a process that occurs during embryogenesis of Drosophila melanogaster. During dorsal closure, the amnioserosa (AS), a one-cell thick epithelial tissue that fills the dorsal opening, shrinks as the lateral epidermis sheets…
Epithelial tissues are continuously exposed to cyclic stretch. Physiological stretching has been found to regulate soft tissue function at the molecular, cellular, and tissue scales, allowing tissues to preserve their homeostasis and adapt…
Constancy of life vitally depends on the internalization of particles through biomembranes. Of particular interest, cellular uptake, including phagocytosis, receptor-mediated endocytosis, and membrane fusion, critically depends on the…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
A quantitative understanding of how cells interact with their extracellular matrix via molecular bonds is fundamental for many important processes in cell biology and engineering. In these interactions, the deformability of cells and matrix…
We report the phenomenon of periodic shape oscillations occurring in 3T3 fibroblasts merely as a consequence of a loss of cell-substrate adhesion. The oscillatory behavior can last many hours at a constant frequency, and can be switched off…
The question of what guides lineage segregation is central to development, where cellular differentiation leads to segregated cell populations destined for specialized functions. Here, using optical tweezers measurements of mouse embryonic…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…