Mechanical imbalance between normal and transformed cells drives epithelial homeostasis through cell competition.

Cell competition in epithelial tissue eliminates transformed cells expressing activated oncoproteins to maintain epithelial homeostasis. Although the process is now understood to be of mechanochemical origin, direct mechanical characterization and associated biochemical underpinnings are lacking. Here, we employ tissue-scale stress and compressibility measurements and theoretical modeling to unveil a mechanical imbalance between normal and transformed cells, which drives cell competition.

Exploring the link between crystal defects and nonaffine displacement fluctuations.

We generalize and then use a recently introduced formalism to study thermal fluctuations of atomic displacements in several two- and three-dimensional crystals. We study both close-packed and open crystals with multiatom bases. Atomic displacement fluctuations in a solid, once coarse grained over some neighborhood, may be decomposed into two mutually orthogonal components.