Role of cell deformability in the two-dimensional melting of biological tissues

Abstract

The size and shape of a large variety of polymeric particles, including biological cells, star polymers, dendrimes, and microgels, depend on the applied stresses as the particles are extremely soft. In high-density suspensions these particles deform as stressed by their neighbors, which implies that the interparticle interaction becomes of many-body type. Investigating a two-dimensional model of cell tissue, where the single particle shear modulus is related to the cell adhesion strength, here we show that the particle deformability affects the melting scenario. On increasing the temperature, stiff particles undergo a first-order solid/liquid transition, while soft ones undergo a continuous solid/hexatic transition followed by a discontinuous hexatic/liquid transition. At zero temperature the melting transition driven by the decrease of the adhesion strength occurs through two continuous transitions as in the Kosterlitz, Thouless, Halperin, Nelson, and Young scenario. Thus, there is a range of adhesion strength values where the hexatic phase is stable at zero temperature, which suggests that the intermediate phase of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition could be hexatic type.

References in corpus (6)

• 2D Melting: From Liquid-Hexatic Coexistence to Continuous Transitions
• Shape and symmetry determine two-dimensional melting transitions of hard regular polygons
• Density affects the nature of the hexatic-liquid transition in two-dimensional melting of core-softened systems
• Effect of a potential softness on the solid-liquid transition in a two-dimensional core-softened potential system
• Disappearance of the hexatic phase in a binary mixture of hard disks
• No unjamming transition in a marginal vertex model of biological tissue

Cited by in corpus (21)

• Solid-Liquid Transition of Deformable and Overlapping Active Particles
• Connecting elasticity and effective interactions of neutral microgels: the validity of the Hertzian model
• Anomalous glassy dynamics in simple models of dense biological tissue
• Attraction tames two-dimensional melting: from continuous to discontinuous transitions
• Phase behaviour of Lennard-Jones particles in two dimensions
• Active T1 transitions in cellular networks
• Hydrodynamic theory of $p-$atic liquid crystals
• Accurate determination of the translational correlation function of two-dimensional solids
• Softness, anomalous dynamics, and fractal-like energy landscape in model cell tissues
• Long-ranged order and flow alignment in sheared $p-$atic liquid crystals
• Yield Stress and Compliance in Active Cell Monolayers
• Two-Dimensional Melting of two- and three-component mixtures
• Alignment interactions drive structural transitions in biological tissues
• Defect absorption and emission for $p$-atic liquid crystals on cones
• Effect of particle size distribution on polydisperse hard disks
• Unconventional rheological properties in systems of deformable particles
• Hydrodynamic stability and pattern formation in hexatic epithelial layers
• Shape-Determined Kinetic Pathways in 2D Solid-Solid Phase Transitions
• Topological Defects, Inherent Structures, and Hyperuniformity
• Melting and re-entrant melting of polydisperse hard disks
• Collective epithelial migration mediated by the unbinding of hexatic defects