Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 37: Tissue Mechanics II

BP 37.9: Talk

Friday, March 13, 2026, 11:45–12:00, BAR/0106

Orientational lineage memory and mechanical ordering during diffusion-limited growth — •Ilias-Marios Sarris¹, Ramin Golestanian^1,2, and Philip Bittihn¹ — ¹MPI for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany — ²Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Growth and shape formation in crowded multicellular assemblies arise from the interplay of chemical gradients, single-cell expansion, and mechanical interactions. Using a particle-based model that resolves nutrient fields and cellular orientations with tunable lineage memory, we study how orientational order emerges in expanding fronts whose morphology is set by nutrient limitation. We find a transition in nematic order controlled by front morphology: under strong orientation inheritance, both thin active layers (fingering fronts) and thick active layers (flat fronts) produce strong alignment, while intermediate cases are less ordered. Velocity, reorientation, and stress statistics reveal a crossover from inheritance-dominated to mechanically driven alignment that progressively overrides lineage memory. As a result, orientational memory yields a fitness advantage only in the diffusion-limited, memory-dominated regime, elucidating how nutrient supply and mechanics jointly shape self-organization during growth.

Keywords: interface growth; oriented division; orientational order; shape formation; collective dynamics