Multicellular Rosettes Drive Fluid-solid Transition in Epithelial Tissues

By Le Yan, Dapeng Bi. Physical Review X, 2018

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Models for confluent biological tissues often describe the network formed by cells as a triple-junction network, similar to foams. However, higher order vertices or multicellular rosettes are prevalent in developmental and {\it in vitro} processes and have been recognized as crucial in many important aspects of morphogenesis, disease, and physiology. In this work, we study the influence of rosettes on the mechanics of a confluent tissue. We find that the existence of rosettes in a tissue can greatly influence its rigidity. Using a generalized vertex model and effective medium theory we find a fluid-to-solid transition driven by rosette density and intracellular tensions. This transition exhibits several hallmarks of a second-order phase transition such as a growing correlation length and a universal critical scaling in the vicinity a critical point. Further, we elucidate the nature of rigidity transitions in dense biological tissues and other cellular structures using a generalized Maxwell constraint counting approach. This answers a long-standing puzzle of the origin of solidity in these systems.

Subfields: Cell Biology, Materials Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/69d79c229efcc0ac68d99db916ac522ef0326e08