Cell Behavior
Cellular adaptation to environmental changes relies on the dynamic remodeling of subcellular structures. Among these, sarcomere structures are fundamental to the organization and function of the cytoskeletal architecture. In muscle-type…
Migration of animal cells is based on the interplay between actin polymerization at the front, adhesion along the cell-substrate interface, and actomyosin contractility at the back. Active gel theory has been used before to demonstrate that…
Galvanotaxis is believed to be driven by the redistribution of transmembrane proteins and other molecules, referred to as "sensors", through electrophoresis and electroosmosis. Here, we update our previous model of the limits of…
Many cellular processes involve information processing and decision making. We can probe these processes at increasing molecular detail. The analysis of heterogeneous data remains a challenge that requires new ways of thinking about cells…
Cancer clinics capture disease data at various scales, from genetic to organ level. Current bioinformatic methods struggle to handle the heterogeneous nature of this data, especially with missing modalities. We propose PARADIGM, a Graph…
Biomaterial surface engineering and integrating cell-adhesive ligands are crucial in biological research and biotechnological applications. The interplay between cells and their microenvironment, influenced by chemical and physical cues,…
Capsular contracture is a pathological response to implant-based reconstructive breast surgery, where the ``capsule'' (tissue surrounding an implant) painfully thickens, contracts and deforms. It is known to affect breast-cancer survivors…
Cells use signalling pathways as windows into the environment to gather information, transduce it into their interior, and use it to drive behaviours. MAPK (ERK) is a highly conserved signalling pathway in eukaryotes, directing multiple…
We present a modelling framework for the dynamics of cells structured by the concentration of a micromolecule they contain. We derive general equations for the evolution of the cell population and of the extra-cellular concentration of the…
Targeting signaling pathways that drive cancer cell migration or proliferation is a common therapeutic approach. A popular experimental technique, the scratch assay, measures the migration and proliferation-driven cell closure of a defect…
We examine the difference in motion ordering between cellular systems with and without information transfer to evaluate the effect of the polar--polar interaction through mutual guiding, which enables cells to inform other cells of their…
Gene expression is a cellular process that plays a fundamental role in human phenotypical variations and diseases. Despite advances of deep learning models for gene expression prediction, recent benchmarks have revealed their inability to…
The discovery of general principles underlying the complexity and diversity of cellular and developmental systems is a central and long-standing aim of biology. Whilst new technologies collect data at an ever-accelerating rate, there is…
Cells continuously sense their surroundings to detect modifications and generate responses. Very often changes in extracellular concentrations initiate signaling cascades that eventually result in changes in gene expression. Increasing…
The ability of a cancer cell population to achieve heterogeneity in their phenotype distributions offers advantages in tumor invasiveness and drug resistance. Studying the mechanisms behind such observed heterogeneity in mammalian cells…
T cells undergo large shape changes (morphodynamics) when migrating. While progress has been made elucidating the molecular basis of cell migration, statistical characterization of morphodynamics and migration has been limited, particularly…
Regulation of cell proliferation is a crucial aspect of tissue development and homeostasis and plays a major role in morphogenesis, wound healing, and tumor invasion. A phenomenon of such regulation is contact inhibition, which describes…
We present a mathematical model of the evolutionary dynamics of a metastatic tumour under chemotherapy, comprising non-local partial differential equations for the phenotype-structured cell populations in the primary tumour and its…
Cells that collide with each other repolarize away from contact, in a process called contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), which is necessary for correct development of the embryo. CIL can occur even when cells make a micron-scale contact…
Real-world cellular invasion processes often take place in curved geometries. Such problems are frequently simplified in models to neglect the curved geometry in favour of computational simplicity, yet doing so risks inaccuracy in any…