Glassy dynamics in active epithelia emerge from an interplay of mechanochemical feedback and crowding
Sindhu Muthukrishnan, Phanindra Dewan, Tanishq Tejaswi, Michelle B. Sebastian, Tanya Chhabra, Soumyadeep Mondal, Soumitra Kolya, Sumantra Sarkar, Medhavi Vishwakarma · 2026
Read Glassy dynamics in active epithelia emerge from an interplay of mechanochemical feedback and crowding by Sindhu Muthukrishnan, Phanindra Dewan, Tanishq Tejaswi, Michelle B. Sebastian, Tanya Chhabra, Soumyadeep Mondal, Soumitra Kolya, Sumantra Sarkar, Medhavi Vishwakarma (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13402711.txt.
Description
Sindhu Muthukrishnan and colleagues resolve a puzzle about why living cell sheets sometimes move like glass, stiff and sluggish, even while busy and warm with activity. Theory said glassy behavior should need near-frozen activity levels, yet real epithelial layers show it at normal energy. Mixing microscope work on cell monolayers with an active vertex computer model, the team tested crowding and internal feedback as candidate causes.
Crowding proved necessary but not sufficient. A feedback loop, where shape changes stress the contractile actin network and the network answers by reshaping cells, had to run as well; without it the sheet stayed fluid. The loop even canceled the fluidizing push of cell division. Two coupled feedback loops also produced collective chemical oscillations matching the experiments. Living glass, the authors conclude, is an active achievement of packed, talking cells.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sindhu Muthukrishnan, Phanindra Dewan, Tanishq Tejaswi, Michelle B. Sebastian, Tanya Chhabra, Soumyadeep Mondal, Soumitra Kolya, Sumantra Sarkar, Medhavi Vishwakarma |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 111215 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |