Biological tissues as materials: fluidity, rigidity and rheology
Cristina Marchetti (UCSB, USA)
Joint seminar with Institut Curie Orsay. Note the unusual location and time.
Over the last decade there has been growing evidence that dense biological tissue can spontaneously undergo transitions between a solid-like rigid state and a fluid-like state. The rheological state of the tissue in turn influences the transmission of mechanical deformations, which plays a central role in driving developmental processes, such as wound healing and morphogenesis, and tumor progression. In this talk I will describe our computational and analytical investigations of the linear and nonlinear mechanical response of confluent tissue to shear deformations.