Related papers: Cadherin-Based Intercellular Adhesions Organize Ep…
Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…
Tissues are characterized by layers of functional units such as cells and extracellular matrix (ECM). Nevertheless, how dynamics at interlayer interfaces help transmit cellular forces in tissues remains overlooked. Here, we investigate a…
Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
Nascent adhesions are submicron transient structures promoting the early adhesion of cells to the extracellular matrix. Nascent adhesions typically consist of several tens of integrins, and serve as platforms for the recruitment and…
Collective cell migration in cohesive units is vital for tissue morphogenesis, wound repair, and immune response. While the fundamental driving forces for collective cell motion stem from contractile and protrusive activities of individual…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Collective cell migration is essential for a wide range of biological processes such as: morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer spreading. However, it is well known that migrating epithelial collectives frequently undergo jamming, stay…
Cell-cell contacts in tissues are continuously subject to mechanical forces due to homeostatic pressure and active cytoskeleton dynamics. While much is known about the molecular pathways of adhesion, the role of mechanics is less well…
Migration of animal cells is based on the interplay between actin polymerization at the front, adhesion along the cell-substrate interface, and actomyosin contractility at the back. Active gel theory has been used before to demonstrate that…
Cell adhesion, a fundamental process of cell biology is involved in the embryo development and in numerous pathologies especially those related to cancers. We constrained cells to adhere on extracellular matrix proteins patterned in a micro…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
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…
Contact inhibition is the process by which cells switch from a motile growing state to a passive and stabilized state upon touching their neighbors. When two cells touch, an adhesion link is created between them by means of transmembrane…
Collective cell migration is crucial in many biological processes such as wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and tumor progression. The leading front of a collective migrating epithelial cell layer often destabilizes into multicellular…
Cell invasion and spatial pattern formation are two distinct manifestations of cellular self-organisation in development, regeneration, and disease. Here, we develop and analyse a unified theoretical framework that links these two seemingly…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
During animal development and homeostasis, the structure of tissues, including muscles, blood vessels and connective tissues adapts to mechanical strains in the extracellular matrix (ECM). These strains originate from the differential…