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Many critical biological processes, like wound healing, require confluentcell monolayers/bulk tissues to transition from a jammed solid-like to afluid-like state. Although numerical studies anticipate changes in the cellshape alone can lead to unjamming, experimental support for this prediction isnot definitive because, in living systems, fluidization due to density changescannot be ruled out. Additionally, a cell's ability to modulate its motilityonly compounds difficulties since even in assemblies of rigid active particles,changing the nature of self-propulsion has non-trivial effects on the dynamics.Here, we design and assemble a monolayer of synthetic cell-mimics and examinetheir collective behaviour. By systematically increasing the persistence timeof self-propulsion, we discovered a cell shape-driven, density-independent,re-entrant jamming transition. Notably, we observed cell shape and shapevariability were mutually constrained in the confluent limit and followed thesame universal scaling as that observed in confluent epithelia. Dynamicalheterogeneities, however, did not conform to this scaling, with the fast cellsshowing suppressed shape variability, which our simulations revealed is due toa transient confinement effect of these cells by their slower neighbors. Ourexperiments unequivocally establish a morphodynamic link, demonstrating thatgeometric constraints alone can dictate epithelial jamming/unjamming.

A shape-driven reentrant jamming transition in confluent monolayers of synthetic cell-mimics