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We introduce a general theoretical framework to study the shape dynamics of actively growing and remodeling surfaces. Using this framework we develop a physical model for growing bacterial cell walls and study the interplay of cell shape…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
Growth and folding in one-layered model tissue sheets are studied in a stochastic, lattice-free single cell model which considers the discrete cellular structure of the tissue, and a coarse grained analytical approach. The polarity of the…
In this paper we present a derivation and multiscale analysis of a mathematical model for plant cell wall biomechanics that takes into account both the microscopic structure of a cell wall coming from the cellulose microfibrils and the…
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…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
Cell growth, division and death are defining features of biological tissues that contribute to morphogenesis. In hydrodynamic descriptions of cohesive tissues, their occurrence implies a non-zero rate of variation of cell density. We show…
In embryogenesis, epithelial cells, acting as individual entities or as coordinated aggregates in a tissue, exhibit strong coupling between chemical signalling and mechanical responses to internally or externally applied stresses.…
During growth, tissue expands and deforms. Given its elastic properties, stresses emerge in an expanding and deforming tissue. Cell rearrangements can dissipate these stresses and numerous experiments confirm the viscoelastic properties of…
A simulation approach to the stochastic growth of bacterial towers is presented, in which a non-uniform and finite nutrient supply essentially determines the emerging structure through elementary chemotaxis. The method is based on cellular…
The dynamics of cellular aggregates is driven by the interplay of mechanochemical processes and cellular activity. Although deterministic models may capture mechanical features, local chemical fluctuations trigger random cell responses,…
Continuum models for the spatial dynamics of growing cell populations have been widely used to investigate the mechanisms underpinning tissue development and tumour invasion. These models consist of nonlinear partial differential equations…
During plastic deformation of metals and alloys, dislocations self-organise in cells, which subsequently continuously decrease in size. How and when these processes take place has remained elusive, because observations of the structural…
Mechanical stresses stemming from environmental factors are a key determinant of cellular behavior and physiology. Yet, the role of self-induced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies has remained largely unexplored. Here, we…
One of the central problems in animal and plant developmental biology is deciphering how chemical and mechanical signals interact within a tissue to produce organs of defined size, shape and function. Cell walls in plants impose a unique…
A stochastic model is used to assess the effect of external parameters on the development of submerged biofilms on smooth and rough surfaces. The model includes basic cellular mechanisms, such as division and spreading, together with an…
The mechanical behaviour of solid biological tissues has long been described using models based on classical continuum mechanics. However, the classical continuum theories of elasticity and viscoelasticity cannot easily capture the…
The microscopic structure of a plant cell wall is given by cellulose microfibrils embedded in a cell wall matrix. In this paper we consider a microscopic model for interactions between viscoelastic deformations of a plant cell wall and…
We study intact and bulging Escherichia coli cells using atomic force microscopy to separate the contributions of the cell wall and turgor pressure to the overall cell stiffness. We find strong evidence of power-law stress-stiffening in the…