Topological metric

Multicellular materials, from bacterial communities to tissues and organoids, can now be imaged at single cell resolution. However, in contrast to ordered crystals, it is not obvious how to compare two amorphous yet structurally different cellular materials. Using the local neighborhood topology, we introduced a topological distance between materials allowing such comparisons, first in 2D, and then extending to 3D structures with an application to bacterial biofilms.

H. Jeckel*, F. Diaz-Pascual*, D. J. Skinner*, B. Song*, E. Jiminez-Sibert, E. Jelli, S. Vaidya, J. Dunkel and K. Drescher
Multispecies phase diagram reveals biophysical principles of bacterial biofilm architectures
Submitted

D. J. Skinner, B. Song, H. Jeckel, E. Jelli, K. Drescher, J. Dunkel
Topological metric detects hidden order in disordered media
Phys. Rev. Lett., 126, 048101 (2021).
Editor's suggestion and featured in Physics magazine.