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Biophysics

Life in a jam

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 726–727 (2016)Cite this article

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Jammed states in growing yeast populations share intriguing similarities with amorphous solids, despite being generated through self-replication. The impact this behaviour has on cell division highlights one way that physical forces regulate biological function.

The apparatus used by Delarue et al.2 consisted of a microfluidic chamber with a narrow opening (Fig. 1b). Yeast cells at an initially low density divided until they occupied the entire chamber, at which point they entered the jammed state and exerted considerable pressure on the chamber walls. The cells then exhibited an intermittent pattern of growth and stasis, which was accompanied by slow build-ups and sudden drops in pressure.

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Figure 1: Jamming in life and in the lab.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shreyas Gokhale and Jeff Gore are in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA,

    Shreyas Gokhale & Jeff Gore

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  1. Shreyas Gokhale
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  2. Jeff Gore
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Correspondence to Shreyas Gokhale or Jeff Gore.

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Gokhale, S., Gore, J. Life in a jam. Nature Phys 12, 726–727 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3777

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