Homeostatic Fluctuations of a Tissue Surface

Abstract

We study the surface fluctuations of a tissue with a dynamics dictated by cell-rearrangement, cell-division, and cell-death processes. Surface fluctuations are calculated in the homeostatic state, where cell division and cell death equilibrate on average. The obtained fluctuation spectrum can be mapped onto several other spectra such as those characterizing incompressible fluids, compressible Maxwell elastomers, or permeable membranes in appropriate asymptotic regimes. Since cell division and cell death are out-of-equilibrium processes, detailed balance is broken, but a generalized fluctuation-response relation is satisfied in terms of appropriate observables. Our work is a first step toward the description of the out-of-equilibrium fluctuations of the surface of a thick epithelium and its dynamical response to external perturbations.

Letter and Supplemental Material

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Defect-mediated morphologies in growing cell colonies
• Stability and roughness of interfaces in mechanically-regulated tissues
• Viscocapillary Instability in Cellular Spheroids
• Inter-particle adhesion regulates the surface roughness of growing dense three-dimensional active particle aggregates
• Pattern formation, localized and running pulsation on active spherical membranes