Cell growth, division and death in cohesive tissues: a thermodynamic approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a thermodynamic framework to describe cell growth, division, and death in tissues, linking biological processes to physical forces and analyzing their effects on tissue dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a thermodynamic approach to model cell density variations in tissues, connecting biological activity with physical forces in a novel way.

Findings

Cell density variation rates depend on chemical potential, velocity divergence, and activity.

The model explains spreading front velocity in cell monolayers.

It predicts mechanical wave instabilities in tissue dynamics.

Abstract

Cell growth, division and death are defining features of biological tissues that contribute to morphogenesis. In hydrodynamic descriptions of cohesive tissues, their occurrence implies a non-zero rate of variation of cell density. We show how linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics allows to express this rate as a combination of relevant thermodynamic forces: chemical potential, velocity divergence, and activity. We illustrate the resulting effects of the non-conservation of cell density on simple examples inspired by recent experiments on cell monolayers, considering first the velocity of a spreading front, and second an instability leading to mechanical waves.