Related papers: How cells tiptoe on adhesive surfaces before stick…
We consider a one-dimensional elastic membrane, which is pushed by growing filaments. The filaments tend to grow by creating local protrusions in the membrane and this process has surface energy and bending energy costs. Although it is…
The biological membrane, which compartmentalizes the cell and its organelles, exhibit wide variety of macroscopic shapes of varying morphology and topology. A systematic understanding of the relation of membrane shapes to composition,…
How can dense biological tissue maintain sharp boundaries between coexisting cell populations? We explore this question within a simple vertex model for cells, focusing on the role of topology and tissue surface tension. We show that the…
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…
Membrane wrapping underlies nanoparticle uptake during endocytosis, whereas the reverse process of membrane unwrapping accompanies particle expulsion and membrane fusion events. Existing theoretical descriptions typically focus on adhesion…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
Lipid bilayer membranes undergo rapid bending undulations with wavelengths from tens of nanometers to tens of microns due to thermal fluctuations. Here, we probe such undulations and the membranes' mechanics by measuring the time-varying…
Motivated by recent experiments on biomimetic membranes exposed to several aqueous phases, we theoretically study the morphology of a membrane in contact with a liquid droplet formed via aqueous phase separation. We concentrate on membranes…
There are three regimes of cell membrane interaction with glass - Tight and loose adhesion, separated by repulsion. Explicitly including hydration, this paper evaluates the pressure between the surfaces as functions of distance for…
Cell cell and cell matrix adhesions are fundamental in all multicellular organisms. They play a key role in cellular growth, differentiation, pattern formation and migration. Cell-cell adhesion is substantial in the immune response,…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Gaining access to the cell interior is fundamental for many applications, such as electrical recording, drug and biomolecular delivery. A very promising technique consists of culturing cells on nano/micro pillars. The tight adhesion and…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
In order to give insights into how anisotropic nano-objects interact with living cell membranes, and possibly self-assemble, we designed magnetic nanorods with average size around 100 nm x 1$\mu$m by assembling iron oxide nanocubes within a…
The detachment dynamics of a fluid membrane with an isotropic spontaneous curvature from a flat substrate are studied by using meshless membrane simulations. The membrane is detached from an open edge leading to vesicle formation. With…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…
We introduce and study the behavior of a tethered membrane of non-zero thickness embedded in three dimensions subject to an effective self-attraction induced by hydrophobicity arising from the tendency to minimize the area exposed to a…
The friction and adhesion between elastic bodies are strongly influenced by the roughness of the surfaces in contact. Here we develop a multiscale molecular dynamics approach to contact mechanics, which can be used also when the surfaces…