Related papers: A Biomechanical Model for Dictyostelium Motility
Cells often migrate on curved surfaces inside the body, such as curved tissues, blood vessels or highly curved protrusions of other cells. Recent \textit{in-vitro} experiments provide clear evidence that motile cells are affected by the…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
The dynamics of a membrane coupled to an active fluid on top of a substrate is considered theoretically. It is assumed that the director field of the active fluid has rotational symmetry in the membrane plane. This situation is likely to be…
We extend the live-cell motility Filament Based Lamellipodium Model to incorporate the forces exerted on the lamellipodium of the cells due to cell-cell collision and cadherin induced cell-cell adhesion. We take into account the nature of…
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,…
Fluid droplets can be induced to move over rigid or flexible surfaces under external or body forces. We describe the effect of variations in material properties of a flexible substrate as a mechanism for motion. In this paper, we consider a…
The mechanics of epithelial tissues, which is governed by forces generated in various cell domains, is often investigated using two-dimensional models that account for the apically-positioned actomyosin structures but neglect basolateral…
Cell crawling on flat substrates is based on intracellular flows of the actin cytoskeleton that are driven by both actin polymerization at the front and myosin contractility at the back. The new experimental tool of optogenetics makes it…
Living tissues undergo wetting transitions: On a surface, they can either form a droplet-like cell aggregate or spread as a monolayer of migrating cells. Tissue wetting depends not only on the chemical but also on the mechanical properties…
Coordination of cytoplasmic flows on large scales in space and time are at the root of many cellular processes, including growth, migration or division. These flows are driven by organized contractions of the actomyosin cortex. In order to…
Inspired by experiments on dynamic extensile gels of biofilaments and motors, we propose a model of a network of linear springs with a kinetics consisting of growth at a prescribed rate, death after a lifetime drawn from a distribution, and…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
We develop two new continuum contact models for coupled adhesion and friction, and discuss them in the context of existing models proposed in the literature. Our new models are able to describe sliding friction even under tensile normal…
During migration cells exhibit a rich variety of seemingly random migration patterns, which makes unraveling the underlying mechanisms that control cell migration a daunting challenge. For efficient migration cells require a mechanism for…
We have simulated the motion of a single vertical, two-dimensional liquid bridge spanning the gap between two flat, horizontal solid substrates of given wettabilities, using a multicomponent pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method. For…
Bidirectional cargo transport by molecular motors in cells is a complex phenomenon, in which the cargo (usually a vesicle) alternately moves in retrograde and anterograde directions. In this case, teams of oppositely pulling motors (eg.,…
We investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of adherent cells characterized by a highly anisotropic actin cytoskeleton. Using a combination of theoretical work and experiments on micropillar arrays, we demonstrate that the…
A system consisting of a doubly clamped beam with an attached body (slider) free to move along the beam has been studied recently by multiple research groups. Under harmonic base excitation, the system has the capacity to passively adapt…
Mechanical forces generated by myosin II molecular motors drive diverse cellular processes, most notably shape change, division and locomotion. These forces may be transmitted over long range through the cytoskeletal medium - a disordered,…
Tissue surface tension influences cell sorting and tissue fusion. Earlier mechanical studies suggest that multicellular spheroids actively reinforce their surface tension with applied force. Here we study this open question through…