Scale-free flocking and giant fluctuations in epithelial active solids

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Shen, Yuan, O'Byrne, Jérémy, Schoenit, Andreas, Maitra, Ananyo, Mege, Rene-Marc, Voituriez, Raphael, Ladoux, Benoit
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Shen, Yuan
O'Byrne, Jérémy
Schoenit, Andreas
Maitra, Ananyo
Mege, Rene-Marc
Voituriez, Raphael
Ladoux, Benoit
author_facet Shen, Yuan
O'Byrne, Jérémy
Schoenit, Andreas
Maitra, Ananyo
Mege, Rene-Marc
Voituriez, Raphael
Ladoux, Benoit
contents The collective motion of epithelial cells is a fundamental biological process which plays a significant role in embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. While it has been broadly investigated for over a decade both in vivo and in vitro, large scale coherent flocking phases remain underexplored and have so far been mostly described as fluid. In this work, we report a mode of large-scale collective motion for different epithelial cell types in vitro with distinctive new features. By tracking individual cells, we show that cells move over long time scales coherently not as a fluid, but as a polar elastic solid with negligible cell rearrangements. Our analysis reveals that this solid flocking phase exhibits signatures of long-range polar order, unprecedented in cellular systems, such as scale-free correlations, anomalously large density fluctuations, and shear waves. Based on a general theory of active polar solids, we argue that these features result from massless Goldstone modes, which, in contrast to polar fluids where they are generic, require the decoupling of global rotations of the polarity and in-plane elastic deformations in polar solids. We theoretically show and consistently observe in experiments that the fluctuations of elastic deformations diverge for large system size in such polar active solid phases, leading eventually to rupture and thus potentially loss of tissue integrity at large scales.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_17705
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scale-free flocking and giant fluctuations in epithelial active solids
Shen, Yuan
O'Byrne, Jérémy
Schoenit, Andreas
Maitra, Ananyo
Mege, Rene-Marc
Voituriez, Raphael
Ladoux, Benoit
Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Biological Physics
The collective motion of epithelial cells is a fundamental biological process which plays a significant role in embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. While it has been broadly investigated for over a decade both in vivo and in vitro, large scale coherent flocking phases remain underexplored and have so far been mostly described as fluid. In this work, we report a mode of large-scale collective motion for different epithelial cell types in vitro with distinctive new features. By tracking individual cells, we show that cells move over long time scales coherently not as a fluid, but as a polar elastic solid with negligible cell rearrangements. Our analysis reveals that this solid flocking phase exhibits signatures of long-range polar order, unprecedented in cellular systems, such as scale-free correlations, anomalously large density fluctuations, and shear waves. Based on a general theory of active polar solids, we argue that these features result from massless Goldstone modes, which, in contrast to polar fluids where they are generic, require the decoupling of global rotations of the polarity and in-plane elastic deformations in polar solids. We theoretically show and consistently observe in experiments that the fluctuations of elastic deformations diverge for large system size in such polar active solid phases, leading eventually to rupture and thus potentially loss of tissue integrity at large scales.
title Scale-free flocking and giant fluctuations in epithelial active solids
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Statistical Mechanics
Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17705