Related papers: Distinct cell shapes determine accurate chemotaxis
Cell shape is an important biomarker that is directly linked to cell function. However, cell morphodynamics, namely the temporal fluctuation of cell shape is much less understood. We study the morphodynamics of MDA-MB-231 cells in type I…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…
In eukaryotic cell chemotaxis, cells extend and retract transient actin-driven protrusions at their membrane that facilitate both the detection of external chemical gradients and directional movement via the formation of focal adhesions…
Bacterial chemotaxis systems are as diverse as the environments that bacteria inhabit, but how much environmental variation can cells tolerate with a single system? Diversification of a single chemotaxis system could serve as an…
Animal morphogenesis involves complex tissue deformation processes, which require tight control over tissue rheology. Yet, it remains insufficiently understood how tissue rheology results from the interplay between cellular packing and…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
As motivated by studies of cellular motility driven by spatiotemporal chemotactic gradients in microdevices, we develop a framework for constructing approximate analytical solutions for the location, speed and cellular densities for cell…
Eukaryotic cells respond to a chemoattractant gradient by forming intracellular gradients of signaling molecules that reflect the extracellular chemical gradient - an ability called directional sensing. Quantitative experiments have…
As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…
One of the major characteristics of living organisms is metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy produced per unit of time. When the mass of organisms increases, the metabolic rate also increases (usually as a power function of mass),…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Active particles with their characteristic feature of self-propulsion are regarded as the simplest models for motility in living systems. The accumulation of active particles in low activity regions has led to the general belief that…
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…
Cells rely on the ability to sense and respond to small spatial differences in chemoattractant concentrations for survival. There is growing evidence that this is accomplished by setting the signaling system near the threshold for…
Mathematical models are vital interpretive and predictive tools used to assist in the understanding of cell migration. There are typically two approaches to modelling cell migration: either micro-scale, discrete or macro-scale, continuum.…
Bacteria track chemical gradients using a biased random walk, a process called chemotaxis. Experiments suggest that bacteria also communicate during this process. Using a mathematical model, we find that sufficiently strong communication…
The macroscopic behaviour of active matter arises from nonequilibrium microscopic processes. In soft materials, active stresses typically drive macroscopic shape changes, which in turn alter the geometry constraining the microscopic…