Active wetting transition in cell aggregates
Abstract
During many biological processes, cell aggregates spread on substrates in a process of active wetting. The existing models of tissue spreading, however, do not explicitly capture the state of partial wetting, in which the cell aggregate reaches a non-zero contact angle. Here, modeling cell aggregates as active polar liquid droplets, we predict a transition between partial and complete wetting. This transition emerges from the competition between tissue surface tension and active traction forces, which is captured in an active Young-Dupré equation. The active wetting transition is discontinuous, and it features a region of parameters in which both partial and complete wetting are possible. Unlike in passive wetting, the transition depends on dynamical parameters such as the tissue viscosity and substrate friction. Finally, adding contractile intercellular active stresses leads to higher contact angles and even full dewetting. Overall, our work predicts an active wetting transition for tissues and it captures the partial wetting states often seen in experiments.
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BibTeX
@misc{francoonate2026active,
title = {{Active wetting transition in cell aggregates}},
author = {MJ Franco-Oñate and Hanno I. Hennighausen and Ricard Alert},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.28912},
eprint = {2608.28912},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28912},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Active wetting transition in cell aggregates
AU - MJ Franco-Oñate
AU - Hanno I. Hennighausen
AU - Ricard Alert
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.28912
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28912
AB - During many biological processes, cell aggregates spread on substrates in a process of active wetting. The existing models of tissue spreading, however, do not explicitly capture the state of partial wetting, in which the cell aggregate reaches a non-zero contact angle. Here, modeling cell aggregates as active polar liquid droplets, we predict a transition between partial and complete wetting. This transition emerges from the competition between tissue surface tension and active traction forces, which is captured in an active Young-Dupré equation. The active wetting transition is discontinuous, and it features a region of parameters in which both partial and complete wetting are possible. Unlike in passive wetting, the transition depends on dynamical parameters such as the tissue viscosity and substrate friction. Finally, adding contractile intercellular active stresses leads to higher contact angles and even full dewetting. Overall, our work predicts an active wetting transition for tissues and it captures the partial wetting states often seen in experiments.
ER -