Upcoming Seminars: Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence

TBA

The flows of tissues of epithelial cells often involve neighbour exchanges called T1 transitions. Mechanically, they are irreversible rearrangements crossing an energy barrier. In this talk, I will deploy geometric constructions of classical Euclidean geometry to calculate this energy barrier for general, isolated T1 transitions dominated by line tensions. I will show how regularity of cell packings, tension fluctuations, and nonlinear tensions increase this energy barrier, providing the basis for coarse-grained understanding of cell neighbour exchanges in continuum models of epithelia.