Stability and Roughness of Interfaces in Mechanically Regulated Tissues

  • publication
  • 07-12-2018

John J Williamson, Guillaume Salbreux. Phys Rev Lett. 2018;121(23):238102. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.238102

Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface by analyzing a model of mechanically regulated tissue growth in the regime of small driving forces. For an interface driven by homeostatic pressure imbalance or leader-cell motility, long and intermediate-wavelength instabilities arise, depending, respectively, on an effective viscosity of cell number change, and on substrate friction. A further mechanism depends on the strength of directed motility forces acting in the bulk. We analyze the fluctuations of a stable interface subjected to cell-level stochasticity, and find that mechanical feedback can help preserve reproducibility at the tissue scale. Our results elucidate mechanisms that could be important for orderly interface motion in developing tissues.

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