Related papers: Geometric Limits of Mitotic Pressure Under Confine…
The microscopic mechanisms involved in the formation/dissociation of methane hydrate confined at the nanometer scale are unraveled using advanced molecular modeling techniques combined with a mesoscale thermodynamic approach. By means of…
Understanding how to produce forces using biomolecular building blocks is essential for the development of adaptive synthetic cells and living materials. Here we ask whether a dynamic polymer system can generate deformation forces in soft…
Measuring the mechanical properties of cells and tissues often involves indentation with a sphere, or compression between two plates. Previously, different theoretical approaches have been developed to retrieve material parameters (e.g.…
Harnessing nanoscale motor proteins to actively control material shape is a promising strategy in nanotechnology and material science. One notable system is the actomyosin network, composed of actin filaments and myosin motor proteins,…
Collective cell flows are a hallmark of tissue dynamics in development, wound healing, and various diseases. Here, we perform experiments on epithelial MDCK cell monolayers, over tens of hours without jamming, on millimeter-scale…
The ability of eukaryotic cells to squeeze through constrictions is limited by the stiffness of their large and rigid nucleus. However, migrating cells are often able to overcome this limitation and pass through constrictions much smaller…
Endocytosis is an essential process by which cells internalize a piece of plasma membrane and material from the outside. In cells with turgor, pressure opposes membrane defor- mations, and increases the amount of force that has to be…
Physical thermodynamic and kinetic, chemical and biological reasoning restrict the spatial dimensions of living cells and confine them to between one and one hundred micrometers. Cells should necessarily be macroscopic, dissipative objects,…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
Culturing cells confined in microscale geometries has been reported in many studies this last decade, in particular following the development of microfluidic-based applications and lab-on-a-chip devices. Such studies usually examine growth…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
A fundamental task in developmental biology is to identify the mechanisms which drive morphogenesis. In many cases, pattern formation is driven by the positional information determined by both the gradient of maternal factors and hard-wired…
Most biological tissues grow by the synthesis of new material close to the tissue's interface, where spatial interactions can exert strong geometric influences on the local rate of growth. These geometric influences may be mechanistic, or…
This study examines the mechanical behavior of a novel class of mechanical metamaterials alternating pentamode lattices and stiffening plates. The unit cell of such lattices consists of a sub-lattice of the face cubic-centered unit cell…
Microorganisms, such as bacteria and microalgae, often live in habitats consisting of a liquid phase and a plethora of interfaces. The precise ways in which these motile microbes behave in their confined environment remain unclear. Using…
Magnetic skyrmions and higher-order topological spin textures offer rich opportunities for multi-level information encoding, yet their deterministic stabilization and transformation under geometric confinement at room temperature remain…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to perform directional mechanosensing by directly measuring minute spatial differences in the mechanical stress on their membranes. Here, we explore the limits of a single mechanosensitive channel activation…
Cellular renewing active matter - assemblies of proliferating and apoptotic cells - underlies tissue homeostasis, morphogenesis, and clonal competition. Previous work in one-dimensional periodic systems identified a fitness advantage…
How pattern and form are generated in a reproducible manner during embryogenesis remains poorly understood. Intestinal organoid morphogenesis involves a number of mechanochemical regulators, including cell-type specific cytoskeletal forces…
We present a systematic study of the influence of cell geometry on the orientational distribution of microtubules (MTs) nucleated from a single microtubule organizing center (MTOC). For simplicity we consider an elliptical cell geometry, a…