A shape-driven reentrant jamming transition in confluent monolayers of synthetic cell-mimics

Arora, P and Sadhukhan, S and Nandi, SK and Bi, D and Sood, AK and Ganapathy, R (2024) A shape-driven reentrant jamming transition in confluent monolayers of synthetic cell-mimics. In: Nature Communications, 15 (1).

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Abstract

Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require densely packed cell monolayers/tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cell shape alone can lead to unjamming, experimental support for this prediction is not definitive because, in living systems, fluidization due to density changes cannot be ruled out. Additionally, a cell�s ability to modulate its motility only compounds difficulties since even in assemblies of rigid active particles, changing the nature of self-propulsion has non-trivial effects on the dynamics. Here, we design and assemble a monolayer of synthetic cell-mimics and examine their collective behaviour. By systematically increasing the persistence time of self-propulsion, we discovered a cell shape-driven, density-independent, re-entrant jamming transition. Notably, we observed cell shape and shape variability were mutually constrained in the confluent limit and followed the same universal scaling as that observed in confluent epithelia. Dynamical heterogeneities, however, did not conform to this scaling, with the fast cells showing suppressed shape variability, which our simulations revealed is due to a transient confinement effect of these cells by their slower neighbors. Our experiments unequivocally establish a morphodynamic link, demonstrating that geometric constraints alone can dictate epithelial jamming/unjamming. © The Author(s) 2024.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Nature Communications
Publisher:	Nature Research
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to authors.
Keywords:	resin, cell; design method; experimental study; fluidization; persistence; prediction, apoptosis; Article; cell activity; cell adhesion; cell density; cell division; cell heterogeneity; cell jamming; cell level; cell motility; cell selection; cell shape; cell size; cell transformation; cell unjamming; chirality; controlled study; epithelium cell; granular cell; probability; surface property; three dimensional printing; torque; animal; artificial cell; biological model; cell motion; epithelium cell; human, Animals; Artificial Cells; Cell Movement; Cell Shape; Epithelial Cells; Humans; Models, Biological
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	16 Dec 2024 10:56
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2024 10:56
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/85793

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