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Experiments have revealed that membrane proteins can form two-dimensional clusters with regular translational and orientational protein arrangements, which may allow cells to modulate protein function. However, the physical mechanisms…
Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) -- which include skeletal stem cells -- are a promising tool in regenerative medicine. However, their heterogeneous and unpredictable in vivo behaviour remains a critical barrier preventing the development…
Cell polarization is a critical process that separates molecular species into two distinct regions in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, guiding biological processes such as cell division and cell differentiation. Although several underlying…
The observed spatio-temporal ciliary beat patterns on multiciliated epithelia are suspected to be the result of self-organizing processes on various levels. Here, we present an abstract epithelium model at the pluricellular level, which…
Through modelling and simulations we show that material instabilities play a dominant role in the mechanical behavior of the fibrous collagen Extracellular Matrix (ECM), as observed when the ECM is deformed by contractile biological cells.…
Apoptotic death pathways are frequently activated by death ligand induction and subsequent activation of the membrane proximal signaling module. Death receptors cluster upon binding to death ligands, leading to formation of a membrane…
Cells use homeostatic mechanisms to maintain an optimal composition of distinct types of phospholipids in cellular membranes. The hydrophilic dipolar layer at the membrane interface, composed of phospholipid headgroups, regulates the…
miRNAs serve as crucial post-transcriptional regulators in various essential cell fate decision. However, the contribution of the mRNA-miRNA mutual regulation to bistability is not fully understood. Here, we built a set of mathematical…
The clustering of B cell receptor (BCR) molecules and the formation of the protein segregation structure known as the immunological synapse appears to precede antigen (Ag) uptake by B cells. The mature B cell synapse is characterized by a…
We study the nucleation of blebs, i.e., protrusions arising from a local detachment of the membrane from the cortex of a cell. Based on a simple model of elastic linkers with force-dependent kinetics, we show that bleb nucleation is…
The motion of a eukaryotic cell presents a variety of interesting and challenging problems from both a modeling and a computational perspective. The processes span many spatial scales (from molecular to tissue) as well as disparate time…
Bacterial cellulose is an important class of biomaterials which can be grown in well-controlled laboratory and industrial conditions. The cellulose structure is affected by several biological, chemical and environmental factors, including…
A simple model is proposed that describes the various morphodynamic principles of migrating cells from polar to amoeboidal motions. The model equation is derived using competing internal cellular compass variables and symmetries of the…
Cells perform directed motion in response to external stimuli that they detect by sensing the environment with their membrane protrusions. In particular, several biochemical and biophysical cues give rise to tactic migration in the…
The human immune system depends on a highly diverse collection of antibody-making B cells. B cell receptor sequence diversity is generated by a random recombination process called "rearrangement" forming progenitor B cells, then a Darwinian…
Lymphocyte selection is a fundamental operation of adaptive immunity. In order to produce B-lymphocytes with a desired antigenic profile, a process of mutation-selection occurs in the germinal center, which is part of the lymph nodes. We…
The p53 protein is well-known for its tumour suppressor function. The p53-MDM2 negative feedback loop constitutes the core module of a network of regulatory interactions activated under cellular stress. In normal cells, the level of p53…
Presented with sensory challenges, living cells employ extensive noisy, fluctuating signalling and communication among themselves to compute a physiologically proper response which often results in symmetry breaking. We propose, based on…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
Variability in the tumorigenic potential among cancer cells within a tumor population is an unresolved fundamental issue in cancer biology. It is important to know whether cancer cells with higher tumorigenic potential, such as cancer stem…