Signature of mechanically induced cell extrusions in cell size distribution
Abstract
How a growing tissue organizes its own homeostatic state is a central question in the physics of living matter. We show that when a growing epithelial sheet counteracts increasing cell density by mechanically squeezing cells out of its plane, a homeostatic in-plane pressure emerges as a generalization of a yield stress. We find that in the quasistatic growth limit the homeostatic state is marginally stable, with a pseudogap in the distribution of local distances to the extrusion threshold pressure. Because such mechanically induced extrusions arise from an instability of individual cells, the pseudogap is imprinted in the distribution of cell areas. This provides an image-based way to test for presence of mechanically induced extrusions and we identify this signature in the developing wing epithelium of \textit{D.~melanogaster}. We expect the same principles to apply to confined three-dimensional tissues.
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BibTeX
@misc{tahaei2026signature,
title = {{Signature of mechanically induced cell extrusions in cell size distribution}},
author = {Ali Tahaei and Marko Popović},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.21702},
eprint = {2609.21702},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21702},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Signature of mechanically induced cell extrusions in cell size distribution
AU - Ali Tahaei
AU - Marko Popović
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/08
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.21702
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.21702
AB - How a growing tissue organizes its own homeostatic state is a central question in the physics of living matter. We show that when a growing epithelial sheet counteracts increasing cell density by mechanically squeezing cells out of its plane, a homeostatic in-plane pressure emerges as a generalization of a yield stress. We find that in the quasistatic growth limit the homeostatic state is marginally stable, with a pseudogap in the distribution of local distances to the extrusion threshold pressure. Because such mechanically induced extrusions arise from an instability of individual cells, the pseudogap is imprinted in the distribution of cell areas. This provides an image-based way to test for presence of mechanically induced extrusions and we identify this signature in the developing wing epithelium of \textit{D.~melanogaster}. We expect the same principles to apply to confined three-dimensional tissues.
ER -