Cell Behavior
The skin forms an efficient barrier against the environment, and rapid cutaneous wound healing after injury is therefore essential. Healing of the uppermost layer of the skin, the epidermis, involves collective migration of keratinocytes,…
It has been interesting that nearly all of the ion activities that have been analysed thus far have exhibited oscillations that are tightly coupled to growth. Here, we present discrete Fourier transform (DFT) spectra with a finite sampling…
Bacteria are able to maintain a narrow distribution of cell sizes by regulating the timing of cell divisions. In rich nutrient conditions, cells divide much faster than their chromosomes replicate. This implies that cells maintain multiple…
Epigenetic Tracking is a mathematical model of biological cells, originally conceived to study embryonic development. Computer simulations proved the capacity of the model to generate complex 3-dimensional cellular structures, and the…
We analyse a generic motility model, with the motility mechanism arising by contractile stress due to the interaction of myosin and actin. A hydrodynamic active polar gel theory is used to model the cytoplasm of a cell and is combined with…
We propose a two-component reaction-transport model for the migration-proliferation dichotomy in the spreading of tumor cells. By using a continuous time random walk (CTRW) we formulate a system of the balance equations for the cancer cells…
All materials enter or exit the cell nucleus through nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), efficient transport devices that combine high selectivity and throughput. A central feature of this transport is the binding of cargo-carrying soluble…
During the aging of the red-blood cell, or under conditions of extreme echinocytosis, membrane is shed from the cell plasma membrane in the form of nano-vesicles. We propose that this process is the result of the self-adaptation of the…
Various molecules exclusively accumulate at the front or back of migrating eukaryotic cells in response to a shallow gradient of extracellular signals. Directional sensing and signal amplification highlight the essential properties in the…
Many cell types exhibit oscillatory activity, such as repetitive action potential firing due to the Hodgkin-Huxley dynamics of ion channels in the cell membrane or reveal intracellular inositol triphosphate (IP$_3$) mediated calcium…
The mechanisms underlying collective migration, or the coordinated movement of a population of cells, are not well understood despite its ubiquitous nature. As a means to investigate collective migration, we consider a wound healing…
Unicellular organisms exhibit elaborate collective behaviors in response to environmental cues. These behaviors are controlled by complex biochemical networks within individual cells and coordinated through cell-to-cell communication.…
To survive starvation, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis forms durable spores. The initial step of sporulation is asymmetric cell division, leading to a large mother-cell and a small forespore compartment. After division is completed and the…
The eukaryotic cell nucleus harbors the DNA genome that is organized in a dynamic chromatin network and embedded in a viscous crowded fluid. This environment directly affects enzymatic reactions and target search processes that access the…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…
The different cell types in a living organism acquire their identity through the process of cell differentiation in which the multipotent progenitor cells differentiate into distinct cell types. Experimental evidence and analysis of…
An influence of a radio-frequency electric field on glioma - brain cancer development is considered. A specific task emerging here is whether this new medical technology is effective against invasive cells with a high motility, when…
Oscillatory behaviour in force-generating systems is a pervasive phenomenon in cell biology. In this work, we investigate how oscillations in the actomyosin cytoskeleton drive cell shape changes during the process of Dorsal Closure, a…
The eukaryotic flagellum beats periodically, driven by the oscillatory dynamics of molecular motors, to propel cells and pump fluids. Small, but perceivable fluctuations in the beat of individual flagella have physiological implications for…
Various rod-shaped bacteria such as the canonical gram negative Escherichia coli or the well-studied gram positive Bacillus subtilis divide symmetrically after they approximately double their volume. Their size at division is not constant,…