Related papers: Contractile network models for adherent cells

There is compelling evidence that substrate stiffness affects cell adhesion as well as cytoskeleton organization and contractile activity. This work was designed to study the cytoskeletal contractile activity of cells plated on microposts…

The non-linear stress-strain relation for crosslinked polymer networks is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. Previously we demonstrated the importance of trapped entanglements in determining the elastic and relaxational…

Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…

We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…

The two approaches to analyzing the large strain behavior of rubbery networks are phenomenologically, using strain energy functions drawn from continuum mechanics, and molecular models, which apply statistical mechanics to compute the…

Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…

A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…

Novel experimental techniques reveal the simultaneous activity of larger and larger numbers of neurons. As a result there is increasing interest in the structure of cooperative -- or correlated -- activity in neural populations, and in the…

We investigate the role of connection density in an adaptive network model of chaotic units that dynamically rewire based on their internal states and local coherence. By systematically varying the network's connectivity density, we uncover…

Networked structures arise in a wide array of different contexts such as technological and transportation infrastructures, social phenomena, and biological systems. These highly interconnected systems have recently been the focus of a great…

Biological networks are customarily described as structurally robust. This means that they often function extremely well under large forms of perturbations affecting both the concentrations and the kinetic parameters. In order to explain…

We present a model for the actin contractile ring of adherent animal cells. The model suggests that the actin concentration within the ring and consequently the power that the ring exerts both increase during contraction. We demonstrate the…

Typically, contagion strength is modeled by a transmission rate $\lambda$, whereby all nodes in a network are treated uniformly in a mean-field approximation. However, local agents react differently to the same contagion based on their…

The actin cytoskeleton of adherent tissue cells often condenses into filament bundles contracted by myosin motors, so-called stress fibers, which play a crucial role in the mechanical interaction of cells with their environment. Stress…

Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures…

Cross-correlations in the activity in neural networks are commonly used to characterize their dynamical states and their anatomical and functional organizations. Yet, how these latter network features affect the spatiotemporal structure of…

The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…

Transport networks are crucial to the functioning of natural and technological systems. Nature features transport networks that are adaptive over a vast range of parameters, thus providing an impressive level of robustness in supply.…

Complex networks describe a wide range of systems in nature and society, much quoted examples including the cell, a network of chemicals linked by chemical reactions, or the Internet, a network of routers and computers connected by physical…

We present a constitutive model for the passive and active response of skeletal muscles. At variance with more classical approaches, the model is developed exploiting adapted Voigt representations of strain and stress tensors within the…