Related papers: A Biomechanical Model for Dictyostelium Motility
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
We present a continuum model of the coupling between cells and substrate that accounts for some of the observed substrate-stiffness dependence of cell properties. The cell is modeled as an elastic active gel, adapting recently developed…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Myxococcus xanthus is a model organism for studying bacterial social behaviors due to its ability to form complex multi-cellular structures. Knowledge of M. xanthus surface gliding motility and the mechanisms that coordinate it are…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
A mathematical model is proposed for shape evolution and locomotion of fish epidermal keratocytes on elastic substrates. The model is based on mechanosensing concepts: cells apply contractile forces onto the elastic substrate, while cell…
Recent experimental work has shown that eukaryotic cells can swim in a fluid as well as crawl on a substrate. We investigate the swimming behavior of Dictyostelium discoideum amoebae who swim by initiating traveling protrusions at the front…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
Cells exhibit qualitatively different behaviors on substrates with different rigidities. The fact that cells are more polarized on the stiffer substrate motivates us to construct a two-dimensional cell with the distribution of focal…
In this paper, we analyze the electrotactic movement of Dictyostelium discoideum from the viewpoint of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Because we can observe fluctuating behavior of cellular trajectories, we analyze the probability…
Crawling cell motility is vital to many biological processes such as wound healing and the immune response. Using a minimal model we investigate the effects of patterned substrate adhesiveness and biophysical cell parameters on the…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
The interaction of the actin cytoskeleton with cell-substrate adhesions is necessary for cell migration. While the trajectories of motile cells have a stochastic character, investigations of cell motility mechanisms rarely elaborate on the…
Cells have the ability to detect electric fields and respond to them with directed migratory movement. Investigations identified genes and proteins that play important roles in defining the migration efficiency. Nevertheless, the sensing…
Coordinated and cooperative motion of cells is essential for embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer invasion. A predictive understanding of the emergent mechanical behaviors in collective cell motion is…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
The coupling of the internal mechanisms of cell polarization to cell shape deformations and subsequent cell crawling poses many interdisciplinary scientific challenges. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to model the…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Epithelial cell clusters often move collectively on a substrate. Mechanical signals play a major role in organizing this behavior. There are a number of experimental observations in these systems which await a comprehensive explanation.…