Speaker
Description
Deformation of single cells in biological tissues plays a strategic role in key processes such as stress propagation, cardiac arrhythmias and wound healing. The size and shape of a cell depends on its internal cytoskeletal activity and nearest-neighbors interactions in a dense environment. Size synchronization and contraction waves emerge as collective behavior typical of non-equilibrium systems. Pulsating active matter (PAM) has been recently introduced as a physical framework to understand these scenarios and provide the minimal ingredients yielding the non-equilibrium phase observed. Activity in PAM does not enter as a classical self-propulsion mechanism but rather as a non-equilibrium dynamics of the degrees of freedom controlling the cells' shape. These assumptions lead to collective dynamics, which can be analysed through a coarse-grained hydrodynamic approach. We elucidate the role of density and size fluctuations and the general mechanisms yielding the transitions described. PAM provides then a framework to tackle emerging challenges in the collective behavior of deformable units.
References
[1] L. Manning. Essay: Collections of Deformable Particles Present Exciting Challenges for Soft Matter and Biological Physics. Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 130002 (2023)
[2] Y. Zhang and É. Fodor. Pulsating Active Matter. Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 238302 (2023) [2] AM and É. Fodor. Diffusive oscillators capture the pulsating states of deformable particles. Phys. Rev. E 111, L053401 (2025)
[3] Y. Zhang, AM and É. Fodor. Species interconversion of deformable particles yields transient phase separation. New J. Phys. 27 043023 (2025)
| Role | Post Doc |
|---|
