Saroj Kumar Nandi

Activity-mediated unjamming of a confluent glassy system is crucial for several biological processes, such as embryogenesis and cancer metastasis. During these processes, the cells progressively change their junction properties, characterized by an interaction parameter , and become motile. Here, we study the effect of nonequilibrium active fluctuations, in the form of self-propulsion, on the glassy dynamics in a confluent system.

Abstract Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require densely packed cell monolayers/tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to a fluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cell shape alone can lead to unjamming, experimental support for this prediction is not definitive because, in living systems, fluidization due to density changes cannot be ruled out.