Epithelial cells arrange into two-dimensional cohesive cell layers that perform very important mechanical functions during development and adult physiology. These layers and their cell constituents can be seen as structured materials. The goal of this thesis is to develop structural mechanics models of tissues (vertex models) based on the sub-cellular dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. We expect to understand the effective viscoelastic properties of epithelial tissues in terms of the microscopic dynamics of the cytoskeleton.

Incoming