Related papers: Contractile network models for adherent cells
Endothelial cells are responsible for the formation of the capillary blood vessel network. We describe a system of endothelial cells by means of two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of point-like particles. Cells' motion is…
Intracellular cargo transport can arise from passive diffusion, active motor-driven transport along cytoskeletal filament networks, and passive advection by fluid flows entrained by such motor/cargo motion. Active and advective transport…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
Contractile cytoskeletal structures such as fine actomyosin meshworks and stress fibers are essential force-generators for mechanical phenomena in live cells, including motility, morphogenesis, and mechanosensing. While there have been many…
For networks of coupled dynamical systems we characterize admissible functions, that is, functions whose gradient is an admissible vector field. The schematic representation of a gradient network dynamical system is of an undirected cell…
Networks of elastic fibers are ubiquitous in biological systems and often provide mechanical stability to cells and tissues. Fiber reinforced materials are also common in technology. An important characteristic of such materials is their…
We develop an agent-based model of vasculogenesis, the de novo formation of blood vessels. Endothelial cells in the vessel network are viewed as linearly elastic spheres and are of two types: vessel elements are contained within the…
Weighted networks capture the structure of complex systems where interaction strength is meaningful. This information is essential to a large number of processes, such as threshold dynamics, where link weights reflect the amount of…
While actin bundles are used by living cells for structural fortification, the microscopic origin of the elasticity of bundled networks is not understood. Here, we show that above a critical concentration of the actin binding protein…
Cellular form and function emerge from complex mechanochemical systems within the cytoplasm. No systematic strategy currently exists to infer large-scale physical properties of a cell from its many molecular components. This is a…
Vertex Models, as used to describe cellular tissue, have an energy controlled by deviations of each cell area and perimeter from target values. The constrained nonlinear relation between area and perimeter leads to new mechanical response.…
As a granular material is compressed, the particles and forces within the system arrange to form complex heterogeneous structures. Force chains are a prime example and are thought to constrain bulk properties such as mechanical stability…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the nonlinear elasticity of in vitro networks of the biopolymer actin is dramatically altered in the presence of a flexible cross-linker such as the abundant cytoskeletal protein filamin. The basic…
Adhesion-dependent cells actively sense the mechanical properties of their environment through mechanotransductory processes at focal adhesions, which are integrin-based contacts connecting the extracellular matrix to the cytoskeleton. Here…
Understanding spreading dynamics will benefit society as a whole in better preventing and controlling diseases, as well as facilitating the socially responsible information while depressing destructive rumors. In network-based spreading…
Attractive colloidal gels exhibit solid-like behavior at vanishingly small fractions of solids, owing to ramified space-spanning networks that form due to particle-particle interactions. These networks give the gel its rigidity, and as the…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
A theoretical approach has been undertaken in order to model the thermodynamic equilibrium of a vesicle adhering to a flat substrate. The vesicle is treated in a canonical description with a fixed number of sites. A finite number of these…