Related papers: Mechanical cell-matrix feedback explains pairwise …
The homeostasis of epithelial tissue relies on a balance between the self-renewal of stem cell populations, cellular differentiation, and loss. Although this balance needs to be tightly regulated to avoid pathologies, such as tumor growth,…
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…
Engineered heart tissues (EHTs) present a potential solution to some of the current challenges in the treatment of heart disease; however, the development of mature, adult-like cardiac tissues remains elusive. Mechanical stimuli have been…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
During the development of an organism, cells must coordinate and organize to generate the correct shape, structure, and spatial patterns of tissues and organs, a process known as morphogenesis. The morphogenesis of embryonic tissues is…
The microscopic structure of a plant cell wall is given by cellulose microfibrils embedded in a cell wall matrix. In this paper we consider a microscopic model for interactions between viscoelastic deformations of a plant cell wall and…
Living organisms rely on endogenous feedback mechanisms to maintain homeostasis in the presence of uncertainty and environmental fluctuations. An emerging challenge at the interface of control systems engineering and synthetic biology is…
Movement of cell clusters along extracellular matrices (ECM) during tissue development, wound healing, and early stage of cancer invasion involve various inter-connected migration modes such as: (1) cell movement within clusters, (2)…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Biomaterial systems have allowed for the in vitro production of complex, emergent tissue behaviors that were not possible with conventional 2D culture systems allowing for analysis of the normal development as well as disease processes. We…
During epithelial wound healing, cell morphology near the healed wound and the healing rate vary strongly among different developmental stages even for a single species like \textit{Drosophila}. We develop deformable particle (DP) model…
There are numerous scenarios in which populations of cells migrate in crowded environments. Typical examples include wound healing, cancer growth and embryo development. In these crowded environments cells are able to interact with each…
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…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
We propose a minimal mathematical model to explain long-range coordination of dynamics of multiple cells in epithelial spreading, which may be induced, under different conditions, by a chemical signal, or mechanical stress, or both. The…
The macroscopic behavior of the solution of a coupled system of partial differential equations arising in the modeling of reaction-diffusion processes in periodic porous media is analyzed. Our mathematical model can be used for studying…
Understanding the interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix (ECM) during collective cell invasion is crucial for advancements in tissue engineering, cancer therapies, and regenerative medicine. This study focuses on the roles…
Control of cell proliferation is a fundamental aspect of tissue physiology central to morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer. Although many of the molecular genetic factors are now known, the system level regulation of growth is still…
Blood coagulation is governed by tightly regulated reaction networks that unfold within a flowing, heterogeneous microvascular environment. Reduced kinetic models of the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways have seen limited in vitro…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…