Unraveling the interplay between cell shape organization and rheology in epithelial tissues

Shear forces in tissues are prevalent in many important biological processes including embryonic development, organogenesis and tumor invasion. The intercellular transmission of shear forces and the rheological response of a tissue remains, however, poorly understood. In this work, we use a minimal cell-based computational model to investigate the rheology of confluent epithelial tissues. We systematically probe the effects of single-cell stiffness, polarized cell motility and the strain rate on intercellular stress. We elucidate how the interplay of these parameters affects the collective organization of cell shapes, intercellular tension and cellular rearrangements. Based on these numerical results, we construct a continuum elasto-plastic description of tissue rheology.