Tissue integrity
Epithelia, such as those lining our lung alveoli or gut, must keep their barrier function intact despite constant mechanical stress. We combine the biophysics of cell-cell junctions with the large-scale rheology of the tissue, in experiments on suspended monolayers and in models, to ask how deformation ruptures adhesions. We showed that intermediate filaments underpin the strength and resilience of a model epithelium (Duque et al., Nature Materials 2024). Living tissues are loaded cyclically, so a follow-up asks what happens over repeated cycles: junctions recover when tension is low, and a slow regime of damage accumulation emerges (Papafilippou et al., Biophysical Journal 2026). Two reviews place this in the wider field, on fracture and on damage and repair. This work is a long collaboration with Guillaume Charras (UCL), and continues with Alessandra Bonfanti (Politecnico di Milano) on crack propagation.