Growth and shrinkage of tissue sheets on substrates: buds, buckles, and pores

TL;DR

This study uses particle-based simulations to explore how tissue sheets grow, buckle, form buds, and develop pores, revealing the mechanical behaviors and dynamics of tissues on substrates under various conditions.

Contribution

The paper introduces a minimal particle-based model combining tissue growth and membrane mechanics to simulate tissue sheet behaviors including buckling, budding, and pore formation.

Findings

Suspended tissues wrinkle with fast growth.

Weak adhesion and strong friction lead to bud formation.

Pores grow via Ostwald ripening during shrinkage.

Abstract

Many tissues take the form of thin sheets, being only a single cell thick, but millions of cells wide. These tissue sheets can bend and buckle in the third dimension. In this work, we investigated the growth and shrinkage of suspended and supported tissue sheets using particle-based simulations. We construct a minimum model, combining particle-based tissue growth and meshless membrane models, to simulate the growth of tissue sheets with mechanical feedback. Free suspended growing tissues exhibit wrinkling when growth is sufficiently fast. Conversely, tissues on a substrate form buds when the adhesion to the substrate is weak and/or when the friction with the substrate is strong. These buds undergo a membrane-mediated attraction and subsequently fuse. The complete detachment of tissues from the substrate and straight buckled bump formation are also obtained at very weak adhesion and/or fast growth rates. In the tissue shrinkage, tissue pores grow via Ostwald ripening and coalescence. The reported dynamics can also be applied in research on the detachment dynamics of different tissues with weakened adhesion.