Session 1C: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates

Swagata Dasgupta

A minimal synthetic model of confluent epithelia

In assemblies of passive particles, increasing the packing fraction can drive the system to a glassy or jammed state. Epithelial cell monolayers, however, can jam, unjam, and reveal many aspects of glassy slowing down often seen in passive systems while remaining confluent, i.e., the packing fraction remains at unity. This remarkable feature of cell monolayers is made possible via changes in cell shape. Furthermore, recent experimental and theoretical studies suggest that cell shape fluctuations, discarded as experimental noise until now, correlate with dynamics. A recently developed synthetic model system that allows for independent control of activity, chiral activity, and cell deformability, helping the speaker and his group to directly confront theory and numerical predictions, will be described. The cell shape variability in synthetic system mimics that seen in living ones and its intimate connection to dynamical arrest will be demonstrated.