We show that this traction-stiffness feedback can lead to traction bistability and hysteresis. For example, increasing ECM stiffness can trigger a discontinuous transition from low to high tractions.
The ECM is a biopolymer network that often exhibits strain stiffening: it becomes stiffer when deformed. Therefore, cellular tractions can stiffen the ECM. At the same time, cells exert stronger tractions on stiffer ECM. What are the consequences of this feedback?
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The sudden jump from low to high tractions could act like a switch to trigger tissue spreading, e.g. through the active wetting transition (see below), in processes such as embryo implantation, wound healing, and tumor invasion.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New preprint! Interested in mechanical interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix? We studied the feedback between cellular traction forces and the ECM nonlinear elasticity. With Irina Pi-Jaum脿 and Jaume Casademunt.
arxiv.org/abs/2606.03669
Despite it being chaotic, active nematic turbulence can give rise to arrested labyrinthine patterns! Check out our new paper @physrevresearch.bsky.social! Work led by Ido Lavi, with Jean-Fran莽ois Joanny and Jaume Casademunt.
journals.aps.org/prresearch/a...
Increasing cellular contractility can also trigger the jump from low to high tractions.
For extra fun, it turns out that these labyrinths have interesting topological properties: They are unicursal, meaning that there are neither bifurcations nor dead ends. Such labyrinths are not common in nature, but they show up in art, for example in the Chartres Cathedral.
Our paper on a Hamiltonian description of non-reciprocal interactions is out @natphys.nature.com! With Yubo Shi, Roderich Moessner, and @marinbukov.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social @ub.edu @icreacommunity.bsky.social
Check it out, and read more in the thread below! 馃憞
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Because low and high tractions are bistable, the transition features hysteresis (see black dashed lines). Hysteresis could provide robustness of cellular tractions against small local variations of ECM stiffness when cells migrate through heterogeneous environments.
An analogy with wetting has proven apt for describing how groups of cells spread on a substrate. But cells are active: they polarize, generate forces and adhere to their surroundings. Experiments now ...
To migrate, cells exert traction forces on the extracellular matrix (ECM) -- a biopolymer network that often exhibits nonlinear strain-stiffening elasticity. Cellular tractions can therefore stiffen t...
Many active and driven systems exhibit non-reciprocal interactions, making them hard to describe with standard methods. Now a constrained Hamiltonian embedding with auxiliary variables reproduces thes...
New preprint! Non-reciprocal interactions don鈥檛 arise from a potential. Yet, we found a way to encode them in a Hamiltonian, which captures the phase transitions of non-reciprocal systems! With Yubo Shi, Roderich Moessner, and @marinbukov.bsky.social @mpipks.bsky.social.
arxiv.org/pdf/2505.05246
