Related papers: Cadherin-Based Intercellular Adhesions Organize Ep…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
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…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
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…
To understand how the mechanical properties of tissues emerge from interactions of multiple cells, we measure traction stresses of cohesive colonies of 1-27 cells adherent to soft substrates. We find that traction stresses are generally…
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…
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…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…
Cell-cell adhesion plays a vital role in the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms. One of its functions is regulation of cell migration, such as occurs, e.g. during embryogenesis or in cancer. In this work, we develop a…
Epithelial cells can assemble into cohesive colonies and collectively interact with substrates by generating extracellular forces through focal adhesions. Recently, a molecularly based thermodynamic model, which integrates both the…
Mechanical coupling between a cell and substrate relies on focal adhesions, clusters of adhesion proteins linking stress fibers (bundles of actin proteins) inside the cell with surrounding tissue. Focal adhesions have been demonstrated to…
Animal cells are active, contractile objects. While bioassays address the molecular characterization of cell contractility, the mechanical characterization of the active forces in cells remains challenging. Here by confronting theoretical…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
Cell-cell adhesion is widely hypothesised to maintain cohesion within the long streams of follower cells that trail leader subpopulations during collective migration, including in neural crest cell migration, angiogenesis, and cancer cell…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…
We generated a computational approach to analyze the biomechanics of epithelial cell aggregates, either island or stripes or entire monolayers, that combines both vertex and contact-inhibition-of-locomotion models to include both cell-cell…
Protrusions at the leading-edge of a cell play an important role in sensing the extracellular cues, during cellular spreading and motility. Recent studies provided indications that these protrusions wrap (coil) around the extra-cellular…