Lumens as active balloons: a biological physics review

TL;DR

This review frames lumen formation as an active balloon phenomenon, integrating biological and physical principles to understand the emergence and maintenance of lumens across various organ systems.

Contribution

It synthesizes experimental and theoretical studies into a unified biological physics framework, highlighting shared physical principles of lumenogenesis.

Findings

Lumen formation involves osmotically driven hydraulic flows and mechanochemical feedbacks.

Shared physical principles can be identified across different biological systems.

Lumen dynamics can be modeled as active, pressurized cavities or balloons.

Abstract

Lumens are cavities enclosed by polarized cells that are essential for organ function, from nutrient transport in the gut to gas exchange in the lungs. Defects in lumen formation are associated with severe diseases, including polycystic kidney disease and respiratory malformations. The emergence, growth, and maintenance of lumens involve a rich set of phenomena that can be framed within out-of-equilibrium physics and biological active matter, including osmotically driven hydraulic flows, coarsening-like dynamics, morphological instabilities, and mechanochemical feedbacks linking luminal pressure to tissue response. Yet experimental and theoretical efforts to study these phenomena have largely developed within specific biological systems, complicating the identification of shared physical principles across them. In this review, we bring these efforts together and present lumenogenesis within a biological physics framework in which lumens are viewed as active balloons: pressurized cavities that are inflated, sculpted, and maintained through tightly coupled active processes.