相关论文: Spatial mapping reveals multi-step pattern of woun…
Dynamic instability in the cytoskeleton underlies a great many vital cellular processes. In neurons, it is thought to play a role in information processing and the establishment of synaptic connections. It is from this interneuronal…
Phytoplankton are the foundation of aquatic food webs. Through photosynthesis, phytoplankton draw down CO2 at magnitudes equivalent to forests and other terrestrial plants and convert it to organic material that is then consumed by other…
We study the yielding transition in soft jammed materials under oscillatory shear, employing a novel methodology that combines rheological measurements with detailed dynamical observations. This method provides a comprehensive view of the…
As small particles skim our airways during breathing, or our intestines during digestion, the surface epithelium is subjected to local exogenous shear that deforms hundreds to thousands of tightly interacting cells. Unlike shear…
Cytoskeletal motor proteins are involved in major intracellular transport processes which are vital for maintaining appropriate cellular function. The motor exhibits distinct states of motility: active motion along filaments, and…
The dynamics of a neural model for hippocampal place cells storing spatial maps is studied. In the absence of external input, depending on the number of cells and on the values of control parameters (number of environments stored, level of…
Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require confluent cell monolayers/bulk tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cell shape alone can…
We derive the main properties of adaptive Hagen-Poiseuille flows in elastic microchannel networks similar to biological veins found in organisms. We demonstrate that adaptive Hagen-Poiseuille flows effectively simulate key features of…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
In this paper, we study an excitable, biophysical system that supports wave propagation of nerve impulses. We consider a slow-fast, FitzHugh-Rinzel neuron model where only the membrane voltage interacts diffusively, giving rise to the…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Leaf venation is a pervasive example of a complex biological network, endowing leaves with a transport system and mechanical resilience. Transport networks optimized for efficiency have been shown to be trees, i.e. loopless. However,…
Tunable mechanics and fracture resistance are hallmarks of biological tissues and highly desired in engineered materials. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms, we study a rigidly percolating double network (DN) made of a stiff and a…
We study the existence of distinct failure regimes in a model for fracture in fibrous materials. We simulate a bundle of parallel fibers under uniaxial static load and observe two different failure regimes: a catastrophic and a slowly…
Epiboly, during which a tissue closes around the surface of the egg, pervades animal development. This epithelial gap closure involves cell intercalations at the edge of the gap. Here, inspired by serosa closure in the beetle Tribolium, we…
The hydrodynamic flow field generated by self-propelled active particles and swimming microorganisms is strongly altered by the presence of nearby boundaries in a viscous flow. Using a simple model three-linked sphere swimmer, we show that…
Channel formation and branching is widely seen in physical systems where movement of fluid through a porous structure causes the spatiotemporal evolution of the medium in response to the flow, in turn causing flow pathways to evolve. We…
Esophageal transport is a physiological process that mechanically transports an ingested food bolus from the pharynx to the stomach via the esophagus, a multi-layered muscular tube. This process involves interactions between the bolus, the…
We use a minimal model for a dense suspension undergoing thickening and thinning to investigate microstructural changes in 2d simulations. Our simulations show that in steady flow the contact network contains distinct building blocks which…
Life presents fascinating examples of self-organization and emergent phenomena. In multi-cellular organisms, a multitude of cells interact to form and maintain highly complex body plans of well-defined size. In this thesis, we investigate…