Related papers: Breaking the VE-cadherin bonds
Endothelial barrier function requires the adhesive activity of VE-cadherin and claudin-5, which are key components of adherens and tight endothelial junctions, respectively. Emerging evidence suggests that VE-cadherin controls claudin-5…
A model is proposed to study the process of hypoxia-induced angiogenesis in cancer cells. The model accounts for the role played by the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-A in regulating the oxygen intake. VEGF-A is dynamically…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Contact inhibition is the process by which cells switch from a motile growing state to a passive and stabilized state upon touching their neighbors. When two cells touch, an adhesion link is created between them by means of transmembrane…
Endothelial cells are responsible for the formation of the capillary blood vessel network. We describe a system of endothelial cells by means of two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of point-like particles. Cells' motion is…
Cadherin adhesion receptors are fundamental determinants of tissue organization in health and disease. Increasingly, we have come to appreciate that classical cadherins exert their biological actions through active cooperation with the…
Angiogenesis recapitulates the growth of blood vessels that progressively expand and remodel into a highly organized and stereotyped vascular network. During adulthood, endothelial cells that formed the vascular wall retain their plasticity…
In vascular targeted therapies, blood-borne carriers should realize sustained drug release from the luminal side towards the diseased tissue. In this context, such carriers are required to firmly adhere to the vessel walls for a sufficient…
Vesicle fusion is an important process underlying cell division, transport, and membrane trafficking. In phospholipid systems, a range of fusogens including divalent cations and depletants have been shown to induce adhesion, hemifusion, and…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
Cell--cell and cell-matrix adhesions play essential roles in the function of tissues. There is growing evidence for the importance of crosstalk between these two adhesion types, yet little is known about the impact of these interactions on…
In this work a Lattice Boltzmann Immersed Boundary method is used for predicting the dynamics of rigid and deformable adhesive micro carriers (1 um) navigating a capillary by the size of 10 um with 20% hematocrit. Red cells and particles…
Through mechanical forces, biological cells remodel the surrounding collagen network, generating striking deformation patterns. Tethers-tracts of high densification and fiber alignment-form between cells, thinner bands emanate from cell…
This paper deals with the adhesive interaction arising between a cell circulating in the blood flow and the vascular wall. The purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of the blood flow velocity on the cell dynamics, and in…
Membrane deformation inside living cells is crucial for the proper shaping of various intracellular organelles and is necessary during the fission/fusion processes that allow membrane recycling and transport (e.g. endocytosis). Proteins…
Vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs) are receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) that regulate proliferation, migration, angiogenesis and vascular permeability of endothelial cells. VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 bind vascular endothelial…
Cell migration plays a fundamental role in numerous physiological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. While cell-cell adhesion is known to regulate motion by shaping cell morphology and…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…
Though membrane trafficking of cell junction proteins has been studied extensively for more than two decades, the accumulated knowledge remains fragmentary. The goal of this review is to synthesize published studies on the membrane…
Cadherins mediate cell-cell adhesion and help the cell determine its shape and function. Here we study collective cadherin organization and interactions within cell-cell contact areas, and find the cadherin density at which a gas-liquid…