Related papers: Myofibroblasts slow down defect recombination dyna…
Fibroblast cells play a key role in maintaining the extracellular matrix. During wound healing, fibroblasts differentiate into highly contractile myofibroblasts, which secrete extracellular matrix proteins like collagen to facilitate tissue…
In confluent cell monolayers, patterns of cell forces and motion are systematically altered near topological defects in cell shape. In turn, defects have been proposed to alter cell density, extrusion, and invasion, but it remains unclear…
Directed fibroblast migration is central to highly proliferative processes in regenerative medicine and developmental biology, such as wound healing and embryogenesis. However, the mechanisms by which single fibroblasts affect each other's…
In healthy hearts myocytes are typically coupled to nearest neighbours through gap junctions. Under pathological conditions such as fibrosis, or in scar tissue, or across ablation lines myocytes can uncouple from their neighbours.…
Background: Mechanotransduction in bone cells plays a pivotal role in osteoblast differentiation and bone remodelling. Mechanotransduction provides the link between modulation of the extracellular matrix and intracellular actions. By…
Many cell types spontaneously order like nematic liquid crystals, and, as such, they form topological defects. While defects with topological charge $\pm$1/2 are common in cell monolayers, the defects with charge $\pm$1, relevant in the…
Growing experimental evidence indicates that topological defects could serve as organizing centers in the morphogenesis of tissues. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for this phenomenon, rooted in the buckling theory of deformable…
We seek to characterize the motility of mouse fibroblasts on 2D substrates. Utilizing automated tracking techniques, we find that cell trajectories are super-diffusive, where displacements scale faster than t^(1/2) in all directions. Two…
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…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…
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…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
Monolayers of anisotropic cells exhibit long-ranged orientational order and topological defects. During the development of organisms, orientational order often influences morphogenetic events. However, the linkage between the mechanics of…
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.…