Related papers: Elastic interactions of active cells with soft mat…
Constructing physical models of living cells and tissues is an extremely challenging task because of the high complexities of both intra- and intercellular processes. In addition, the force that a single cell generates vanishes in total due…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Active matter, exemplified by adaptive living materials such as the actomyosin cytoskeleton, can navigate material parameter space dynamically, leading to unconventional mechanical responses. In particular, it can self-drive toward elastic…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
The recent discovery of electro-active polymers has shown great promises in the field of soft robotics, and was logically followed by experimental, numerical and theoretical developments. Most of these studies were concerned with systems…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
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,…
A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…
Adhesive contact between a thin elastic sheet and a substrate in a liquid environment arises in a range of biological, physical and technological applications. By considering the dynamics of this process that naturally couples fluid flow,…
Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…
Two-dimensional (2D) mechanical models of confluent tissues have related the mechanical state of a monolayer of cells to the average perimeter length of the cell cross sections, predicting floppiness or rigidity of the material. For the…
Experimentally measuring the elastic properties of thin biological surfaces is non-trivial, particularly when they are curved. One technique that may be used is the indentation of a thin sheet of material by a rigid indenter, whilst…
Recent experiments have exploited elastic instabilities in membranes to create complex patterns. However, the rational design of such structures poses many challenges, as they are products of nonlinear elastic behavior. We pose a simple…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…