No unjamming transition in a marginal vertex model of biological tissue

Abstract

Vertex models are a popular approach to modeling the mechanical and dynamical properties of dense biological tissues, describing the tissue as a network of connected polygons representing the cells. Recently a class of two-dimensional vertex models was shown to exhibit a disordered rigidity transition controlled by the preferred cellular geometry, echoing experimental findings. An attractive variant of these models uses a Voronoi tessellation to describe the cells and endows them with a non-equilibrium model of cellular motility, leading to rich, glassy behavior. This glassy behavior was suggested to be inextricably linked to an underlying jamming transition. We test this conjecture, exploring the low-effective-temperature limit of the Voronoi model by studying cell trajectories from detailed dynamical simulations in combination with rigidity measurements of energy-minimized disordered cell configurations. We find that the zero-temperature limit of this model has no unjamming transition.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The statistical physics of active matter: from self-catalytic colloids to living cells
• A geometrically controlled rigidity transition in a model for confluent 3D tissues
• Soft yet sharp interfaces in a vertex model of confluent tissue
• Anomalous glassy dynamics in simple models of dense biological tissue
• Geometric frustration and solid-solid transitions in model 2D tissue
• Role of cell deformability in the two-dimensional melting of biological tissues
• Statistical properties of 3D cell geometry from 2D slices