Related papers: Breaking the VE-cadherin bonds
The addition of small amounts of a secondary fluid to a suspension can, through the attractive capillary force, lead to particle bridging and network formation. The capillary bridging phenomenon can be used to stabilize particle suspensions…
Phase separation, crucial for spatially segregating biomolecules in cells, is well-understood in the simple case of a few components with pairwise interactions. Yet, biological cells challenge the simple picture in at least two ways: First,…
The great majority of electronic and optoelectronic devices depends on interfaces between n-type and p-type semiconductors. Finding such matching donor-acceptor systems in molecular crystals remains a challenging endeavor. Structurally…
Protrusions at the leading-edge of a cell play an important role in sensing the extracellular cues, during cellular spreading and motility. Recent studies provided indications that these protrusions wrap (coil) around the extra-cellular…
Peptide nanofibrils (PNFs) and peptide amphiphiles (PAs) are promising tools for enhancing viral transduction and gene transfer. However, quantitative insight into how their supramolecular architecture governs virion-cell interactions is…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
The intrinsic optical nonlinearities of quasi-one dimensional structures, including conjugated chain polymers and nanowires, are shown to be dramatically enhanced by the judicious placement of a side group or wire of sufficiently short…
Adhesion plays an integral role in diverse biological functions ranging from cellular transport to tissue development. Estimation of adhesion strength, therefore, becomes important to gain biophysical insight into these phenomena. In this…
The deformability of vesicles critically influences their engulfment by lipid membranes, a process central to endocytosis, viral entry, drug delivery, and intercellular transport. While theoretical models have long predicted this influence,…
Advanced-Glycation-Endproducts (AGEs) are known to be a major cause of impaired tissue material properties. In collagen fibrils, the main building component of human tissue, these AGEs appear as fibrillar cross-links. When AGEs accumulate…
Active cell-junction remodeling is important for tissue morphogenesis, yet its underlying physics is not understood. We study a mechanical model that describes junctions as dynamic active force dipoles. Their instability can trigger cell…
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…
A rigid object moving in a viscous fluid and in close proximity with an elastic wall experiences self-generated elastohydrodynamic interactions. This has been the subject of an intense research activity, with a recent and growing attention…
We analyse a multi-phase field model for an epithelial monolayer with pairwise adhesions between neighbouring cells following an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, representing the stochastic turnover of junctional molecular motors. These…
Motivated by the reported peculiar dynamics of a red blood cell in shear flow, we develop an analytical theory for the motion of a nearly--spherical fluid particle enclosed by a visco--elastic incompressible interface in linear flows. The…
Blood vessels form either when dispersed endothelial cells (the cells lining the inner walls of fully-formed blood vessels) organize into a vessel network (vasculogenesis), or by sprouting or splitting of existing blood vessels…
Cells in tissues can organize into a broad spectrum of structures according to their function. Drastic changes of organization, such as epithelial-mesenchymal transitions or the formation of spheroidal aggregates, are often associated…
Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is the main pathway used by eukaryotic cells to take up extracellular material, but the dominant physical mechanisms driving this process are still elusive. Recently several high-resolution imaging techniques…
Collective cell migration is essential for a wide range of biological processes such as: morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer spreading. However, it is well known that migrating epithelial collectives frequently undergo jamming, stay…
The structure of flow networks determines their function under normal conditions as well as their response to perturbative damage. Brain vasculature often experiences transient or permanent occlusions in the finest vessels, but it is not…