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Junctional-fluctuation-mediated fluidization of multi-phase-field epithelial monolayers

James N. Graham1 and Jan Rozman1,2,3,*

  • *Contact author: jan.rozman@ijs.si
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Phys. Rev. E 114, 024407 – Published 24 August, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lbph-g5kd

Abstract

We analyze a multi-phase-field model for an epithelial monolayer with pairwise adhesions between neighboring cells following an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, representing the stochastic turnover of junctional molecular motors. These fluctuations in junctional adhesion result in rearrangements in the tissue, fluidizing it and producing diffusive cell motion. Similar junctional fluctuations have proven a very useful tool in the vertex model literature, and we hope they will be equally helpful to the multi-phase-field model approach. Moreover, we observe that the cells' effective diffusion coefficient depends nonmonotonically on the persistence time of the fluctuations, confirming results previously observed in the vertex model.

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Phys. Rev. E 114, 024407– Published 24 August, 2026
  • Received 27 August 2025
  • Accepted 30 July 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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