Related papers: Physical limits on cellular directional mechanosen…
We propose an alternative mechanism for the gating of biological membrane channels in response to membrane tension that involves a change in the slope of the membrane near the channel. Under biological membrane tensions we show that the…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
In this work we upscale a prototypical kinetic transport equation which models a cell population moving in a fibrous environment with a chemo- or haptotactic signal influencing both the direction and the magnitude of the cell velocity. The…
A large number of eukaryotic cells are able to directly detect external chemical gradients with great accuracy and the ultimate limit to their sensitivity has been a topic of debate for many years. Previous work has been done to understand…
How cells reliably infer information about their environment is a fundamentally important question. While sensing and signaling generally start with cell-surface receptors, the degree of accuracy with which a cell can measure external…
Berg and Purcell [Biophys. J. 20, 193 (1977)] calculated how the accuracy of concentration sensing by single-celled organisms is limited by noise from the small number of counted molecules. Here we generalize their results to the sensing of…
Physical limit of molecular sensing has been extensively studied in biological systems. Biosensors are engineered equivalents of molecular sensors in living systems and play critical role in disease diagnosis and management. Investigation…
The precision of concentration sensing is improved when cells communicate. Here we derive the physical limits to concentration sensing for cells that communicate over short distances by directly exchanging small molecules (juxtacrine…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…
In-vivo, cells are frequently exposed to multiple mechanical stimuli arising from the extracellular microenvironment, with deep impact on many biological functions. On the other hand, current methods for mechanobiology do not allow to…
Metastasis is a process of cell migration that can be collective and guided by chemical cues. Viewing metastasis in this way, as a physical phenomenon, allows one to draw upon insights from other studies of collective sensing and migration…
Organisms use specialized sensors to measure their environments, but the fundamental principles that determine their accuracy remain largely unknown. In Escherichia coli chemotaxis, we previously found that gradient-climbing speed is…
Many crucial biological processes operate with surprisingly small numbers of molecules, and there is renewed interest in analyzing the impact of noise associated with these small numbers. Twenty--five years ago, Berg and Purcell showed that…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…
Cells respond to chemical cues, and the precision with which they can sense these cues is fundamentally limited by the stochastic nature of diffusion and ligand binding. Berg and Purcell famously investigated how well a small sensor in an…
Biologically important membrane channels are gated by force at attached tethers. Here, we generically characterize the non-trivial interplay of force, membrane tension, and channel deformations that can affect gating. A central finding is…
Cells are constantly exposed to diverse stimuli-chemical, mechanical, or electrical-that guide their movement. In physiological conditions, these signals often overlap, as seen during infections, where neutrophils and dendritic cells…
Cells often divide under mechanical confinement, where surrounding structures restrict shape changes during cytokinesis. Although forces generated during confined division have been measured experimentally, it remains unclear how…
The growth of a tissue, which depends on cell-cell interactions and biologically relevant process such as cell division and apoptosis, is regulated by a mechanical feedback mechanism. We account for these effects in a minimal…
Signals recorded from neurons with extracellular planar sensors have a wide range of waveforms and amplitudes. This variety is a result of different physical conditions affecting the ion currents through a cellular membrane. The…