Active nematic cell monolayers
Li-Shing Lin1*, Hsuan-Yi Chen1,2
1Department of Physics, National Central University, Zhongli, Taiwan
2Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Nankang, Taiwan
* Presenter:Li-Shing Lin, email:zetaeason@hotmail.com
In vitro, monolayer cell sheets are easy to be controlled and observed in comparison to multilayered cell sheets. Different from multilayered systems, cell-substrate drag in a monolayer cell sheet dominates and the number of cells per unit area fluctuates under perturbations. In this thesis, we construct a theoretical model to describe the dynamics of monolayer cell sheets with spindle-shaped non-motile cells aligned parallel to the boundaries. Our model predicts that monolayer cell sheets with fixed orientation are always stable under small perturbations, while those with fluctuating cell orientations are not stable in the long-wavelength limit. Increasing active contractility or decreasing sheet width decreases the relaxation rate of the system, and increases the range of the unstable region in the cases with fluctuating cell orientation.


Keywords: Soft matters, Biophysics, Active nematics, Monolayer cell sheets