Related papers: Hysteresis in the cell response to time-dependent …
Intermolecular forces are known to precipitate adhesion events between solid bodies. Inspired by a macro-scale experiment showing the hysteretic adhesion of a piece of flexible tape over a plastic substrate, we develop here a model of…
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…
Recent experiments suggest that the interplay between cells and the mechanics of their substrate gives rise to a diversity of morphological and migrational behaviors. Here, we develop a Cellular Potts Model of polarizing cells on a…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Accurate assessment of stiffness distribution is essential due to the critical role of single cell mechanobiology in the regulation of many vital cellular processes such as proliferation, adhesion, migration, and motility. Cell stiffness is…
How do cells tune emergent properties at the scale of tissues? One class of such emergent behaviors are rigidity transitions, in which a tissue changes from a solid-like to a fluid-like state or vice versa. Here, we introduce a new way for…
Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
Biological systems are majorly dependent on their property of bistability in order to exhibit nongenetic heterogeneity in terms of cellular morphology and physiology. Spatial patterns of phenotypically heterogeneous cells, arising due to…
Hygro-responsive materials exhibit a complex structure-to-property relationship. The interactions of water within these materials under varying hygric and mechanical loads play a crucial role in their macroscopic deformation and final…
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.…
We study the buckling of an idealized, semiflexible filament along whose contour magnetic moments are placed. {We give analytic expressions for the critical stiffness of the filament below which it buckles due to the magnetic compression.…
Surface-adhesion and stiffness of underlying substrates mediate geometry, mechanics and self-organization of bacterial colonies. Recent studies have qualitatively indicted that stiffness may impact bacterial attachment, yet the variation of…
During neurodevelopment, neuronal axons navigate through the extracellular environment, guided by various cues to establish connections with distant target cells. Among other factors, axon trajectories are influenced by heterogeneities in…
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,…
Multisite protein modification is a ubiquitous mechanism utilized by cells to control protein functions. We have recently proposed a dynamical description of multisite protein modification which embodies all the essential features of the…
Hayashi and Carthew (Nature 431 [2004], 647) have shown that the packing of cone cells in the Drosophila retina resembles soap bubble packing, and that changing E- and N-cadherin expression can change this packing, as well as cell shape.…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…
The dynamic characteristics of near-field levitation bearings have been investigated in this study. Through theoretical analysis, two different types of system stiffness are defined and derived analytically. The dynamic stiffness relates…
A growing or compressed thin elastic sheet adhered to a rigid substrate can exhibit a buckling instability, forming an inward hump. Our study shows that the strip morphology depends on the delicate balance between the compression energy and…