Manning Research Group

journals.aps.orgPerspective on physical systems with a purpose: Using tunable degrees of freedom to enable functionBy adjusting internal parameters, both living organisms and synthetic materials can optimize their behavior to execute complex tasks. This Perspective explores the physical algorithms driving ``tunabl...

Physical Review E commissioned perspective articles on the future of SPLASHY (soft, polymeric, living, active, statistical, heterogeneous, yielding) physics. I wrote one about tunable matter, I think an exciting future direction for our field. Feedback welcome! journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

manning-research-group.github.ioPublications – ManningGroup

I know this is behind a paywall for some -- I have been trying to post this on arXiv for a month and I'm stuck in moderation limbo there, so you can also download it directly from my research group publications page for now: manning-research-group.github.io/publications...

17 Sept

I'm hiring for multiple postdoc positions: www.sujobopps.com/postings/114... Feel free to reach out to me or current/recent members of my group to learn more about how research in our group works. Also, please feel free to re-post to spread the word. Thanks!

7 Sept

New work in PNAS, spearheaded by former postdoc Sadjad Arzash in collaboration with Andrea Liu, developing a principled, top-down & bottom up approach for figuring out what algorithms development uses to execute tasks...

Sadjad Arzash@sadjadarzash.bsky.social

1/6 Can learning in physical systems help us understand how embryos shape themselves? Our PNAS paper with Andrea Liu & @manningresearch.bsky.social introduces a tunable-matter framework for morphogenesis, using convergent extension as a case study. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

federalregister.govRegulation for Federal Financial AssistanceThe Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposes to revise the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance to improve government- wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, co...

2 June

The proposed new government rules for politics-based decision making on federal scientific grants will materially impact my ability to due science in the US: www.federalregister.gov/documents/20... Please reach out to your congress representatives on this: www.linkedin.com/posts/lisa-m...

elizabethginexi.substack.comWhat We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB-2026-0034)What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice

2 June

If you are a scientist, this substack is a great guide for what to do: elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

journals.aps.orgPRX Life - PRX Life Collection on adaptation and learning

29 Apr

Wanted to highlight this interesting article collection at PRX Life that emerged from a fun workshop at the @nitmb.bsky.social a little over a year ago: journals.aps.org/prxlife/coll...

28 Apr

Excited about this new paper from our research group on cell division in stratified epithelia, spearheaded by Dr. Somiealo Azote and @dr-rajendra-s-negi.bsky.social. See the great tutorial from Rajendra!

Rajendra Singh Negi@dr-rajendra-s-negi.bsky.social

(1/n) Does basal stem cell division orientation regulate skin stratification and tissue mechanics? And can tissue mechanics feed back to control division orientation? In our new preprint, we use a 3D vertex model to explore this @manningresearch.bsky.social @somiealo.bsky.social

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

events.syracuse.eduDissertation Defense: Tyler Hain

26 Mar

Big day for the Manning Research Lab: Tyler Hain is defending his Ph.D. thesis, “Mapping the Rigid Landscapes of Disordered Networks and Active Solids.” Yay, Tyler! events.syracuse.edu/event/disser....

arxiv.orgUsing the force landscape of an active solid to predict plastic deformationNon-active disordered solids feature quasilocalized excitations that control plasticity, similar to crystal lattice defects, and these excitations can be identified via harmonic or anharmonic analyses...

26 Mar

Check out his manuscript and preprint on the thesis work: arxiv.org/abs/2603.11425 arxiv.org/abs/2407.13939 with more to come in the next few months!

news.syr.edu3 Faculty Members Named AAAS FellowsDuncan Brown, Kevin Crowston and Lisa Manning are the first trio from Syracuse to earn the prestigious science honor in a single year.

26 Mar

Thanks to all the students, postdocs, and collaborators over the past 15 years that really did the work that this AAAS Fellowship celebrates. Happy to share it with all of you! news.syr.edu/2026/03/26/3...

Manning research group represents at the APS March meeting (aka Global Summit)! I am so proud of all the great work that will be presented by current students and postdocs from our research group. Here's a time-ordered list of talks, please check them out if you're in Denver this week!

Somiealo Azote epse Hassikpezi, A Predictive Model for Coupling Cell Division Orientation to Tissue Mechanics During Epithelial Morphogenesis, March 19th, 8:36–8:48 a.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2B Mechanics of Cells and Tissues IV | MAR-S58

Tanya Chhabra, Impact of tunable interactions on emergent behavior in a random field Ising model with feedback, March 19th, 12:48–1:00 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2A Physics of Learning and Adaptation III | MAR-U57

Tyler Hain, Using the force landscape of an active solid to predict plastic deformation, March 17th, 2:36–2:48 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2G Active Matter II | MAR-G63M

Lisa Manning, Rigidity transitions in confluent and mesenchymal biological tissues, March 17th, 5:54–6:30 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 1A Rigidity Transitions in Biological Tissues and Materials | MAR-J54

Alex Grigas, Porous mesenchymal tissue as a fluid under tension, March 16th, 1:24–1:36 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2E Mechanics of Cells and Tissues I | MAR-B61

Rajendra Negi, Mechanobiological Regulation of Symmetry Breaking During Zebrafish Embryogenesis: Interplay of Myosin Activity, Mechanical Forces, and External Flows, March 16th, 5:30–5:42 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2E Morphogenesis I | MAR-C61

Kelly Aspinwall, Parameterization of the critically rigid manifolds of vertex models, March 16th, 1:00–1:12 p.m. | Convention Center, Bluebird 2E Mechanics of Cells and Tissues I | MAR-B61

Excited to highlight a new preprint about mechanical contributions to tissue homeostasis, from the Manning group in collaboration with the amazing Carien Niessen and Sara Wickstrom @sarawickstrom.bsky.social labs, spearheaded by Dr. Somiealo Azote: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

cell.comDynamic regulation of tissue fluidity controls skin repair during wound healingDuring skin wound repair, the basal cell layer transitions from a solid-like homeostatic state to a fluid-like state that allows tissue remodeling during repair and then progressively returns to a sol...

Previous work from the Sprinzak and Campas/Simons/Blanpain labs suggest some interesting possible paths forward… www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... , www.cell.com/developmenta...

And also, what are all those oriented cell divisions doing to the tissue mechanics? stay tuned...

Notch activity itself is gated by tissue stiffness and basal layer density/cell shape. This generates an elegant self-organizing feedback loop where delamination is directly link to the abundance and packing of basal layer stem cells, explaining the robustness of epithelial self-renewal.

Future work: A key remaining open question on the physics side is precisely how this tissue-stiffness-dependent Notch activation is triggered – how do only a subset of cells (exactly the right number, perhaps not too close together) decide to commit?

Cell state commitment in the basal layer activates Notch signaling. At E15.5 and E16.5 a population of Notch positive cells emerges that share characteristics of both basal and suprabasal cells, and also exhibit cell shapes and protein localization patterns consistent with cells that delaminate.

The basement membrane and the basal layer of the tissue are substantially stiffer and less fluid-like at E15.5 and E16.5 compared to E14.5.

At E14.5, only small changes to a cell’s mechanics (x-axis) are needed to get a cell to robustly delaminate (fraction of delaminating cells, y-axis -> 1). At E15.5 and E16.5, a very large change to cell mechanics is required to get a cell to delaminate.

Next, we wonder how cells decide to commit to delamination at these later stages, so as to have precisely the right number of cells moving up to keep the basal layer in homeostasis (not over- nor under-populated).

These changes -- predicted by fitting the model to experimental cell and tissue geometries -- are corroborated by observations of protein expression levels and localization.

We can use an Arrhenius approximation to extract the magnitude of the mechanical barrier to delamination from the rates of cell delamination. We find a large mechanical barrier emerges at E15.5 (and the barrier is small before that).

The results are that at earlier stages (E14.5) the basal layer is soft (small delta s) with small heterotypic tension at the apical side (small sigma_a) and a positive, repulsive interaction with the basement membrane (sigma_b).

At later stages (E15.5), the interaction with the basement membrane becomes wetting (negative sigma_b), and the heterotypic apical tension and tissue stiffness both increase, with further tissue stiffening even later at (E16.5).

Three vertex model parameters control those observables – the cell stiffness parameterized in terms of a cell shape (delta s), a wetting tension with the basement membrane (sigma_b), and a heterotypic interfacial tension at the apical side of basal cells interacting with suprabasal cells (sigma_a).

We used another set of data collapses to predict how each observable depends on model parameters, allowing us to use an overconstrained solver to determine the vertex model parameter that best match our experimental observations!

To quantify how the magnitude of the barrier changes across developmental stages, we developed a method to match 3D vertex model parameters to cell- and tissue scale observables.

In both simulations and experiments, we can measure 4 quantities – apical angle of basal cells, orientation of later interfaces with respect to the basement membrane, overall roughness of the basal-suprabasal interface, and height of basal cells.

We use a stratified 3D vertex model to demonstrate that the barrier prevents cells from freely moving across these compartments, unless a committed cell changes its mechanical properties.

A vertex model simulation data collapse demonstrates that the rate at which cells are able to move upwards depends on a precise combination of the apical and basal tensions of the committed cell, as well as on the stiffness of surrounding cells.

We demonstrate that there is a switch in multilayering strategy across development. At earlier stages, the mechanical barrier is quite small, so cells can easily divide perpendicularly to the basement membrane to populate upper layers.

At later stages perpendicular divisions are suppressed, and cells must commit to delamination and change their mechanical properties dramatically in order to move upward from the basal layer.

Such feedbacks are becoming better understood in the small intestine, where stem cells reside in a “closed niche” defined by the crypt, but the stratified epidermis is an “open niche” that lack obvious morphological and geometric cues and even distinct molecular markers of cell states.

Here, we study the developing stratified mouse epidermis to show that the physical separation of basal stem cells from suprabasal differentiating cells is driven by a mechanical boundary that forms between the layers during development.

Multilayered self-renewing epithelia are vertebrate-specific tissues that function as life-essential barriers, controlling host–environment interaction and acting as disease entry points. cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/10/1...

The mechanism by which these key tissues are generated and maintained has remained a key unresolved question, which is challenging because it involves feedbacks between cell mechanics, shape, and cell fate.