Ellen Juel Pørtner

1 Introduction Anisotropic living cells are described as active nematics because of their out-of-equilibrium state and their alignment state, exhibiting quasi-long range orientational order [1, 2]. Each cell transduces biochemical energy into motion, and cells altogether generate collective movement [3]. Collective cell dynamics is crucial for various physiological processes such as wound healing, morphogenesis, and cancer progression [4].