Related papers: Viscoelastic Properties of Vascular Endothelial Ce…
We present a simple and \emph{non-invasive} experimental procedure to measure the linear viscoelastic properties of cells by passive video particle tracking microrheology. In order to do this, a generalised Langevin equation is adopted to…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
We consider a cellular monolayer, described using a vertex-based model, for which cells form a spatially disordered array of convex polygons that tile the plane. Equilibrium cell configurations are assumed to minimize a global energy…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
The balance between stretching and bending deformations characterizes shape transitions of thin elastic sheets. While stretching dominates the mechanical response in tension, bending dominates in compression after an abrupt buckling…
Reduced blood flow, as occurring in ischemia or resulting from exposure to microgravity such as encountered in space flights, induces a decrease in the level of shear stress sensed by the endothelial cells forming the inner part of blood…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
Blood viscosity decreases with shear stress, a property essential for an efficient perfusion of the vascular tree. Shear-thinning is intimately related to the dynamics and mutual interactions of red blood cells (RBCs), the major…
Experiments show that when a monolayer of cells cultured on an elastic substrate is subject to a cyclic stretch, cells tend to re-orient either perpendicularly or at an oblique angle with respect to the main direction of the stretch. Due to…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…
Epithelial tissues act as barriers and, therefore, must repair themselves, respond to environmental changes and grow without compromising their integrity. Consequently, they exhibit complex viscoelastic rheological behavior where…
Cell mechanical functions like locomotion, contraction and division are controlled by the cytoskeleton, a dynamic biopolymer network whose mechanical properties remain poorly understood. We perform single-cell uniaxial stretching…
Biological cells embedded in fibrous matrices have been observed to form inter-cellular bands of dense and aligned fibers, through which they mechanically interact over long distances. Such matrix-mediated cellular interactions have been…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
Organogenesis involves large deformations and complex shape changes that require elaborate mechanical regulation. Models of tissue biomechanics have been introduced to account for the coupling between mechanical response and biochemical…
When cell sheets fold during development, their apical or basal surfaces constrict and cell shapes approach the geometric singularity in which these surfaces vanish. Here, we reveal the mechanical consequences of this geometric singularity…