Bistability of Dielectrically Anisotropic Nematic Crystals and the Adaptation of Endothelial Collectives to Stress Fields
OPEN ACCESS
Author / Producer
Date
2022-06-03
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
Citations
Altmetric
OPEN ACCESS
Data
Rights / License
Abstract
Endothelial monolayers physiologically adapt to flow and flow-induced wall shear stress, attaining ordered configurations in which elongation, orientation, and polarization are coherently organized over many cells. Here, with the flow direction unchanged, a peculiar bi-stable (along the flow direction or perpendicular to it) cell alignment is observed, emerging as a function of the flow intensity alone, while cell polarization is purely instructed by flow directionality. Driven by the experimental findings, the parallelism between endothelia is delineated under a flow field and the transition of dual-frequency nematic liquid crystals under an external oscillatory electric field. The resulting physical model reproduces the two stable configurations and the energy landscape of the corresponding system transitions. In addition, it reveals the existence of a disordered, metastable state emerging upon system perturbation. This intermediate state, experimentally demonstrated in endothelial monolayers, is shown to expose the cellular system to a weakening of cell-to-cell junctions to the detriment of the monolayer integrity. The flow-adaptation of monolayers composed of healthy and senescent endothelia is successfully predicted by the model with adjustable nematic parameters. These results may help to understand the maladaptive response of in vivo endothelial tissues to disturbed hemodynamics and the progressive functional decay of senescent endothelia.
Permanent link
Publication status
published
External links
Editor
Book title
Journal / series
Volume
9 (16)
Pages / Article No.
2102148
Publisher
Wiley-VCH
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Collective cell behavior; Endothelial; Monolayers; Nematic; Polarization; Wall shear stress
Organisational unit
03462 - Poulikakos, Dimos (emeritus) / Poulikakos, Dimos (emeritus)
Notes
Funding
ETH-12 15-1 - A High Resolution Reference-Free Traction Force Microscopy Method (ETHZ)
ETH-07 17-1 - Namasté: Nano and MicroEngineered MetaMaterials for the Study of Epithelial Sheet Dynamics (ETHZ)
ETH-07 17-1 - Namasté: Nano and MicroEngineered MetaMaterials for the Study of Epithelial Sheet Dynamics (ETHZ)