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Due to the potential applications in biomedical engineering, it becomes more and more important to understand the process of engulfment and internalization of nanoparticles (NPs) by cell membranes. Despite the fact that the interaction…

Curvature in biological membranes can be generated by a variety of different molecular mechanisms such as protein scaffolding, lipid or protein asymmetry, cytoskeletal forces, etc. These mechanisms have the net effect of generating stresses…

Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…

The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…

A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…

Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…

Biomolecules, such as proteins and RNAs, can phase separate in the cytoplasm of cells to form biomolecular condensates. Such condensates are liquid-like droplets that can wet biological surfaces such as membranes. Many molecules that…

The formation of microparticles requires the bending of the plasma membrane away from the cytosol. The capcity of the cell membrane to form a microparticle, and the rate of membrane deformation, are controlled by multiple factors, including…

The membrane curvature of cells and intracellular compartments continuously adapts to enable cells to perform vital functions, from cell division to signal trafficking. Understanding how membrane geometry affects these processes in vivo is…

The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…

We monitored isotropic spreading of mouse embryonic fibroblasts on fibronectin-coated substrates. Cell adhesion area versus time was measured via total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy. Spreading proceeds in well-defined phases.…

The dynamical response of a lipid membrane to a local perturbation of its molecular symmetry is investigated theoretically. A density asymmetry between the two membrane leaflets is predominantly released by in-plane lipid diffusion or…

Cells crawling through tissues migrate inside a complex fibrous environment called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides signals regulating motility. Here we investigate one such well-known pathway, involving mutually antagonistic…

We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly non-trivial and involves first order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a…

Particles diffusing near interfaces face anisotropic resistance to motion due to hydrodynamic interactions. While this has been extensively studied near \textit{hard} interfaces since the works of Lorentz and Brenner, our understanding of…

In dense biological tissues, cell types performing different roles remain segregated by maintaining sharp interfaces. To better understand the mechanisms for such sharp compartmentalization, we study the effect of an imposed heterotypic…

The interaction between nano- or micro-sized particles and cell membranes is of crucial importance in many biological and biomedical applications such as drug and gene delivery to cells and tissues. During their cellular uptake, the…

Advances in nanotechnology lead to an increasing interest in how nanoparticles interact with biomembranes. Nanoparticles are wrapped spontaneously by biomembranes if the adhesive interactions between the particles and membranes compensate…

We propose a two-scale model to resolve essential features of developmental tissue deformations. The model couples individual cellular behavior to the mechanics at tissue scale. This is realized by a multiphase-field model addressing the…

In living cells, protein-rich condensates can wet the cell membrane and surfaces of membrane-bound organelles. Interestingly, many phase-separating proteins also bind to membranes leading to a molecular layer of bound molecules. Here we…