Related papers: PAKing up to the endothelium
Understanding the mechanisms by which cells coordinate their size with their ability to divide has long attracted the interest of biologists. The Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway is becoming increasingly recognized as a master regulator of…
Vascular networks play a key role in the development, function, and survival of many organisms, facilitating transport of nutrients and other critical factors within and between systems. The development of these vessel networks has been…
New cells are generated throughout life and integrate into the hippocampus via the process of adult neurogenesis. Epileptogenic brain injury induces many structural changes in the hippocampus, including the death of interneurons and altered…
Chemotaxis, the directional locomotion of cells towards a source of a chemical gradient, is an integral part of many biological processes - for example, bacteria motion, single-cell or multicellular organisms development, immune response,…
Recent experiments have illuminated a remarkable growth mechanism of rod-shaped bacteria: proteins associated with cell wall extension move at constant velocity in circles oriented approximately along the cell circumference (Garner et al.,…
Arrhythmias are potentially fatal disruptions to the normal heart rhythm, but their underlying dynamics is still poorly understood. Theoretical modeling is an important tool to fill this gap. Typical studies often employ detailed…
Tumorigenic transformation of human epithelial cells in vitro has been described experimentally as the potential result of a process known as spontaneous immortalization. In this process a generic series of cell state transitions occur in…
In the human immune system, T-helper cells are able to differentiate into two lymphocyte subsets: Th1 and Th2. The intracellular signaling pathways of differentiation form a dynamic regulation network by secreting distinctive types of…
How cells with diverse morphologies and cytoskeletal architectures modulate their mechanical behaviors to drive robust collective motion within tissues is poorly understood. During wound repair within epithelial monolayers in vitro, cells…
The response of cells during spreading and motility is dictated by several multi-physics events, which are triggered by extracellular cues and occur at different time-scales. For this sake, it is not completely appropriate to provide a cell…
Receptor-mediated endocytosis is an ubiquitous process through which cells internalize biological or synthetic nanoscale objects, including viruses, unicellular parasites, and nanomedical vectors for drug or gene delivery. In passive…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
The cell cytoskeleton is a striking example of "active" medium driven out-of-equilibrium by ATP hydrolysis. Such activity has been shown recently to have a spectacular impact on the mechanical and rheological properties of the cellular…
Understanding and manipulating the interactions between foreign bodies and cell membranes during endo- and phagocytosis is of paramount importance, not only for the fate of living cells but also for numerous biomedical applications. This…
Phagocytosis is the fundamental cellular process by which eukaryotic cells bind and engulf particles by their cell membrane. Particle engulfment involves particle recognition by cell-surface receptors, signaling and remodeling of the actin…
Experiments of in vitro formation of blood vessels show that cells randomly spread on a gel matrix autonomously organize to form a connected vascular network. We propose a simple model which reproduces many features of the biological…
Erythropoiesis is a mechanism for the production of red blood cells by cellular differentiation. It is based on amplification steps due to an interplay between renewal and differentiation in the successive cell compartments from stem cells…
Endothelial cells form the linchpin of vascular and lymphatic systems, creating intricate networks that are pivotal for angiogenesis, controlling vessel permeability, and maintaining tissue homeostasis. Despite their critical roles, there…
Epigenetic inheritance during cell division is essential for preserving cell identity by stabilizing the overall chromatin organisation. Heterochromatin,the condensed and transcriptionally silent fraction of chromatin,is marked by specific…
The cell cycle is a tightly controlled process, yet its underlying genetic network shows marked differences across species. Which of the associated structural features follow solely from the ability to impose the appropriate gene expression…