Related papers: Contractile network models for adherent cells
The morphogenesis of cells and tissues involves an interplay between chemical signals and active forces on their surrounding surface layers. The complex interaction of hydrodynamics and material flows on such active surfaces leads to…
Disease awareness in infection dynamics can be modeled with adaptive contact networks whose rewiring rules reflect the attempt by susceptibles to avoid infectious contacts. Simulations of this type of models show an active phase with…
Contractile forces exerted on the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) lead to the alignment and stretching of constituent fibers within the vicinity of cells. As a consequence, the matrix reorganizes to form thick bundles of aligned…
Complex network theory provides a unifying framework for the study of structured dynamic systems. The current literature emphasizes a widely reported phenomenon of intermittent interaction among network vertices. In this paper, we introduce…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
Current understanding of how contractility emerges in disordered actomyosin networks of non-muscle cells is still largely based on the intuition derived from earlier works on muscle contractility. This view, however, largely overlooks the…
Many biological, ecological and economic systems are best described by weighted networks, as the nodes interact with each other with varying strength. However, most network models studied so far are binary, the link strength being either 0…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
We study the elastic deformations in a cross-linked polymer network film triggered by the binding of submicron particles with a sticky surface, mimicking the interactions of viral pathogens with thin films of stimulus-responsive polymeric…
Reconstituted filamentous actin networks with myosin motor proteins form active gels, in which motor proteins generate forces that drive the network far from equilibrium. This motor activity can also strongly affect the network elasticity;…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
We study the elasticity of random stiff fiber networks. The elastic response of the fibers is characterized by a central force stretching stiffness as well as a bending stiffness that acts transverse to the fiber contour. Previous studies…
Cell motility in dense cell collectives is pivotal in various diseases like cancer metastasis and asthma. A central aspect in these phenomena is the heterogeneity in cell motility, but identifying the motility of individual cells is…
The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…
Adaptive networks are a novel class of dynamical networks whose topologies and states coevolve. Many real-world complex systems can be modeled as adaptive networks, including social networks, transportation networks, neural networks and…
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…
Interactions between units in phyical, biological, technological, and social systems usually give rise to intrincate networks with non-trivial structure, which critically affects the dynamics and properties of the system. The focus of most…
We consider the propagation of tension along specific filament of a semiflexible filament network in response to the application of a point force using a combination of numerical simulations and analytic theory. We find the distribution of…
Biochemistry and mechanics are closely coupled in cell adhesion. At sites of cell-matrix adhesion, mechanical force triggers signaling through the Rho-pathway, which leads to structural reinforcement and increased contractility in the actin…