Mechanical signaling via nonlinear wavefront propagation in a mechanically-excitable medium

Abstract

Models that invoke nonlinear wavefront propagation in a chemically excitable medium are rife in the biological literature. Indeed, the idea that wavefront propagation can serve as a signaling mechanism has often been invoked to explain synchronization of developmental processes. In this paper we suggest a new kind of signaling based not on diffusion of a chemical species but on the propagation of mechanical stress. We construct a theoretical approach to describe mechanical signaling as a nonlinear wavefront propagation problem and study its dependence on key variables such as the effective elasticity and damping of the medium.