Univ. Prof. John W. C. Dunlop is Professor of Biological Physics, Department of the Chemistry and Physics of Materials, University of Salzburg, (Salzburg, Austria).

Abstract: The spontaneous pattern formation observed in large groups of interacting objects is well known to many, with examples ranging from the flocking of birds, the schooling of fish, the rotation of penguin colonies to even the behaviour of people dancing at heavy metal concerts (Popkin. 2016). At smaller length scales the collective behaviour of cells within growing tissues can also be viewed as a type of swarming, and potentially there are similarities that enable comparisons over these large length scales (Szabo et al 2006). These phenomena have excited physicists for quite some time now and many models derived from the fields of statistical physics have been developed to describe such swarming behaviour (Szabo et al 2006). This presentation will introduce some of these concepts and how surface curvature can influence swarming of interacting objects. These output of these models will be discussed in the light of experimental observations of tissue patterning on curved surfaces.

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Active particle model for swarming                                 Spontaneous spiral patterns observed by
on a curved surface (Ehrig et al 2017)                             on curved surface (Ehrig et al 2019)

References:
Ehrig, S., Ferracci, J., Weinkamer, R., Dunlop, J. W. C., Curvature-controlled defect dynamics in active systems, Physical Review E, (2017) 95, 062609 Ehrig, S., Schamberger, B., Bidan, C. M., West, A., Jacobi, C., Lam, K., Kollmannsberger, P., Petersen, A., Tomancak, P., Kommareddy, K., Fischer, F. D., Fratzl, P., Dunlop, J. W. C., Surface tension determines tissue shape and growth kinetics, Science Advances, (2019) 5, eaav9394 Popkin, G., The Physics of Life, Nature, (2016), 529, 16-18.Szabó, B., Szöllösi, G. J., Gönci, B., Jurányi, Z., Selmeczi, D., and Vicsek, T., Phase transition in the collective migration of tissue cells: Experiment and model, Physical Review E, (2006) 74, 061908