Noise-induced transitions from contractile to extensile active stress in isotropic fluids

2024/10/18 by Mathieu Dedenon, Karsten Kruse, Dedenon, Mathieu +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #Cellular Mechanics and Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.14358

openalex publication_date 2024/10/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Tissues of living cells are a prime example of active fluids. There is experimental evidence that tissues generate extensile active stress even though their constituting cells are contractile. Fluctuating forces that could result from cell-substrate interactions have been proposed to be able to induce a transition from contractile to extensile active stress. Through analytic calculations and numerical computations, we show that in isotropic active fluids, nonlinearities and a coupling between fluctuating forces and fluid density are necessary for such a transition to occur. Here, both transitions from extensile to contractile and vice versa are possible.

Cited by

• Defect states in compressible active polar fluids with turnover

Related

• Fluctuation-Induced Electromechanical Transitions in Active Cell Aggregates
• Stress-dependent amplification of active forces in nonlinear elastic media
• Why Extensile and Contractile Tissues Could be Hard to Tell Apart
• Connecting local active forces to macroscopic stress in elastic media
• Stress Fluctuations in Transient Active Networks