SKM 2023 – scientific programme
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 15: Tissue Mechanics II
BP 15.2: Talk
Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 10:45–11:00, BAR Schö
Noisy growth and buckling in soft tissues — •Rahul G. Ramachandran1, Ricard Alert1,2, and Pierre A. Haas1,2,3 — 1Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex System, 01187 Dresden, Germany — 2Center for Systems Biology Dresden, 01307 Dresden, Germany — 3Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, 01307 Dresden, Germany
The generation of curved tissue shapes such as the villi of the gut or the gyrations of the brain has been associated with buckling instabilities that release elastic stresses accumulated by constrained growth. However, most mechanical theories for these morphogenetic processes assume homogeneous growth and mechanical properties, while these parameters often exhibit strong fluctuations in biological systems. Here, we therefore study a minimal mechanical model of these fluctuations: We analyze the buckling of a growing, neo-Hookean rod through nonlinear finite-element simulations. Fluctuations are introduced as spatial inhomogeneities of the growth tensor and the material parameters. Our results show that stronger growth fluctuations promote buckling by decreasing the buckling threshold. We interpret these results using strain energy distribution from homogenous, patterned and random growth simulations and validate them using analytical calculations.