Related papers: Surface functionalization modulates collective cel…
Biological surfaces, such as developing epithelial tissues, exhibit in-plane polar or nematic order and can be strongly curved. Recently, integer (+1) topological defects have been identified as morphogenetic hotspots in living systems.…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
We propose the use of topographic modulation of surfaces to select and localize particles in nematic colloids. By considering convex and concave deformations of one of the confining surfaces we show that the colloid-flat surface repulsion…
In development and homeostasis, multi-cellular systems exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity in their biochemical and mechanical properties. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how spatiotemporally heterogeneous forces affect the…
We report about a mechanism for surface localization, present in finite defect-free polyatomic lattices described by a tight binding model. Numerical diagonalization and degenerated perturbation theory show that there is a minimum number of…
Cell migration plays a fundamental role in numerous physiological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. While cell-cell adhesion is known to regulate motion by shaping cell morphology and…
Epithelial cells can assemble into cohesive colonies and collectively interact with substrates by generating extracellular forces through focal adhesions. Recently, a molecularly based thermodynamic model, which integrates both the…
Cell shape is determined by a balance of intrinsic properties of the cell as well as its mechanochemical environment. Inhomogeneous shape changes underly many morphogenetic events and involve spatial gradients in active cellular forces…
The growth of several biological tissues is known to be controlled in part by local geometrical features, such as the curvature of the tissue interface. This control leads to changes in tissue shape that in turn can affect the tissue's…
We derive and numerically solve a surface active nematodynamics model. We validate the numerical approach on a sphere and analyse the influence of hydrodynamics on the oscillatory motion of topological defects. For ellipsoidal surfaces the…
Inspired by recent experiments that highlight the role of nematic defects in the morphogenesis of epithelial tissues, we develop a minimal framework to study the dynamics of an active curved surface driven by its nematic texture. Allowing…
Living materials at different length scales manifest active nematic features such as orientational order, nematic topological defects, and active nematic turbulence. Using numerical simulations we investigate the impact of fluid inertia on…
Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Cell layers are often categorized as contractile or extensile active nematics but recent experiments on neural progenitor cells with induced $+1$ topological defects challenge this classification. In a bottom-up approach, we first study a…
Flocking models with metric and topological interactions are supposed to exhibit distinct features, as for instance the presence and absence of moving polar bands. On the other hand, quenched disorder (spatial heterogeneities) has been…
In many biological systems, the curvature of the surfaces cells live on influence their collective properties. Curvature should likewise influence the behavior of active colloidal particles. We show using molecular simulation of…
The optimal use of resources has motivated the engineering community to employ controlled distribution of material within their structural designs, often relying on cellular and lattice porous structures. In this research work, a…
Controlling the collective motion of epithelial cell populations is fundamental for understanding multicellular self-organization and for advancing tissue engineering. Under spatial confinement, cells are known to exhibit either vortex…