CELL DIVISION IN TISSUES LIKE DISLOCATION UNBINDING IN 2D SOLIDS? Fluidization of tissues by cell division and apoptosis

A growing body of experiments has demonstrated that mechanical forces play an important role in regulating tissue formation, morphogenesis and tumor growth. Growing tissues, notably cancerous tumors, are continuously remodeled by cell division and apoptosis (cell death) that couple to the elastic deformations of the material, changing its mechanical properties. The paper by Ranft et al. proposes a continuum model to describe tissue dynamics on time scales large compared to the inverse rate of cell division and apoptosis and demonstrates that at large scales the tissue effectively behaves as a viscoelastic fluid, but with a number of unusual properties.