Related papers: Memory-driven topological ordering during the tran…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
Epithelial monolayers are a central building block of complex organisms. Topological defects have emerged as important elements for single cell behavior in flat epithelia. Here we theoretically study such defects in a three-dimensional…
External stress can accelerate molecular mobility of amorphous solids by several orders of magnitude. The changes in mobility are commonly interpreted through the Eyring model, which invokes an empirical activation volume whose origin…
The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…
Collective cell migration is a key driver of embryonic development, wound healing, and some types of cancer invasion. Here we provide a physical perspective of the mechanisms underlying collective cell migration. We begin with a catalogue…
Collective cell migration is a highly regulated process involved in wound healing, cancer metastasis and morphogenesis. Mechanical interactions among cells provide an important regulatory mechanism to coordinate such collective motion.…
Polymers with active segments constitute prospective future materials and are used as a model for some biological systems such as chromatin. The directions of the active forces are typically introduced with temporal or spatial correlations…
Collective migration -- the directed, coordinated motion of many self-propelled agents -- is a fascinating emergent behavior exhibited by active matter that has key functional implications for biological systems. Extensive studies have…
Alignment interactions in active matter are typically modeled as relaxational dynamics toward local consensus. In unbounded systems, this makes alignment effectively decoupled from local density and therefore unable to sustain self-confined…
Self-organisation into spatially modulated structures has different nature from phase transition into uniform states. Skyrmions and half-skyrmions (merons) are representatives of such structures and are utilised in designing…
We consider the slow and athermal deformations of amorphous solids and show how the ensuing sequence of discrete plastic rearrangements can be mapped onto a directed network. The network topology reveals a set of highly connected regions…
The rheology of biological tissue plays an important role in many processes, from organ formation to cancer invasion. Here, we use a multi-phase field model of motile cells to simulate active microrheology within a tissue monolayer. When…
We study the athermal mechanical response of deformable ring assemblies to quasistatic compression. Beyond jamming, further densification induces buckling of rings, resulting in macroscopic mechanical softening. Under cyclic compression,…
Although collective cell migration (CCM) is a highly coordinated and fine-tuned migratory mode, instabilities in the form of cell swirling motion (CSM) often occur. The CSM represents a product of the active turbulence obtained at low…
We study a fundamental instability mechanism in nonlinear, nonlocal dynamical systems arising from the interaction of long-range memory and stochastic regime switching. The dynamics are governed by network-coupled, operator-valued Volterra…
Quantifying the in-plane rheology of epithelial monolayers remains challenging due to the difficulty of imposing controlled shear. We introduce a self-driven, rheometer-like assay in which collective migration generates stationary shear…
Collective cell motility plays central roles in various biological phenomena such as inflammatory response, wound healing, cancer metastasis and embryogenesis. These are biological demonstrations of the unjamming transition. However,…
Memory systems can store vastly different amounts of information despite similar hardware constraints. Here, we show that superior spatial memory emerges from a discrete stiffening of hippocampal population geometry-a transition from…
Topological defects in active polar fluids exhibit complex dynamics driven by internally generated stresses, reflecting the deep interplay between topology, flow, and non-equilibrium hydrodynamics. Feedback control offers a powerful means…
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…