Related papers: Spontaneous waves in muscle fibres
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…
Mechanical signaling plays a key role in biological processes like embryo development and cancer growth. One prominent way to probe mechanical properties of tissues is to study their response to externally applied forces. Using a…
Ciliated tissues such as in the mammalian lungs, brains, and reproductive tracts, are specialized to pump fluid. They generate flows by the collective activity of hundreds of thousands of individual cilia that beat in a striking metachronal…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
Elastic active matter or active solid consists of self-propelled units embedded in an elastic matrix. Active solid resists deformation; the shape-preserving property and the intrinsic non-equilibrium nature make active solids a superior…
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…
The growth of a tissue, which depends on cell-cell interactions and biologically relevant process such as cell division and apoptosis, is regulated by a mechanical feedback mechanism. We account for these effects in a minimal…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback from the…
This fluid dynamics video shows high-frequency capillary waves excited by the volumetric oscillations of microbubbles near a free surface. The frequency of the capillary waves is controlled by the oscillation frequency of the microbubbles,…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
Models of active nematics in biological systems normally require complexity arising from the hydrodynamics involved at the microscopic level as well as the viscoelastic nature of the system. Here we show that a minimal, space-independent,…
Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is important to…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
Collective motion is a phenomenon observed across length scales in nature, from bacterial swarming and tissue migration to the flocking of animals. The mechanisms underlying this behavior vary significantly depending on the biological…
Spiral waves in excitable media possess both wave-like and particle-like properties. When resonantly forced (forced at the spiral rotation frequency) spiral cores travel along straight trajectories, but may reflect from medium boundaries.…
Cilia and flagella in biological systems often show large scale cooperative behaviors such as the synchronization of their beats in "metachronal waves". These are beautiful examples of emergent dynamics in biology, and are essential for…
The spontaneous emergence of contraction-inducing electrical activity in the uterus at the beginning of labor remains poorly understood, partly due to the seemingly contradictory observation that isolated uterine cells are not spontaneously…
We analyze the collective behavior of hydrodynamically coupled molecular motors. We show that the local fluxes induced by motors displacement can induce the experimentally observed bidirectional motion of cargoes and vesicles. By means of a…
Cellular locomotion often involves the motion of thin, elastic filaments, such as cilia and flagella, in viscous environments. The manuscript serves as a general introduction to the topic of modelling microscale elastohydrodynamics. We…