Meeting Abstract
Animal tissues are continuously subjected to dynamic force loading while they crawl, walk, run or swim. While epithelial tissues provide an important barrier function in animals, they are subjected to extreme strains during everyday activities such as breathing and feeding. However, failure or inability to withstand to these extreme strains can result in epithelial fractures, and associated diseases. Understanding tissue mechanics and adaptive response in dynamic force landscapes remains an important frontier. Motivated by understanding tissue properties at the limits of their integrity, here we carry out a multi-modal study of a simple yet highly dynamic organism, the Trichoplax adhaerens. We report the discovery of abrupt, bulk epithelial tissue fractures induced by the organism’s own motility. Coupled with rapid healing, this discovery accounts for dramatic shape changes and physiological asexual division in this early-divergent metazoan. We generalize our understanding of this phenomena by codifying it in a heuristic model focusing on the debonding/bonding criterion in a soft-active-living material. Using a suite of quantitative experimental and numerical techniques, we demonstrate a force-driven ductile to brittle material transition governing the morpho-dynamics of tissues pushed to the edge of rupture.
