Related papers: Physics of adherent cells
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
Adhesion-dependent cells actively sense the mechanical properties of their environment through mechanotransductory processes at focal adhesions, which are integrin-based contacts connecting the extracellular matrix to the cytoskeleton. Here…
Cell cell and cell matrix adhesions are fundamental in all multicellular organisms. They play a key role in cellular growth, differentiation, pattern formation and migration. Cell-cell adhesion is substantial in the immune response,…
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…
Animal cells are active, contractile objects. While bioassays address the molecular characterization of cell contractility, the mechanical characterization of the active forces in cells remains challenging. Here by confronting theoretical…
The interaction of graphene with neighboring materials and structures plays an important role in its behavior, both scientifically and technologically. The interactions are complicated due to the interplay between surface forces and…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Adhering cells actively probe the mechanical properties of their environment and use the resulting information to position and orient themselves. We show that a large body of experimental observations can be consistently explained from one…
This review provides an introduction to the essential physics of soft adhesion, including the thermodynamics of adhesion and wetting, the mechanics of contact with deformable materials, and the material properties that most affect…
Mechanical coupling between a cell and substrate relies on focal adhesions, clusters of adhesion proteins linking stress fibers (bundles of actin proteins) inside the cell with surrounding tissue. Focal adhesions have been demonstrated to…
Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…
Cell-cell contacts in tissues are continuously subject to mechanical forces due to homeostatic pressure and active cytoskeleton dynamics. While much is known about the molecular pathways of adhesion, the role of mechanics is less well…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
Cells sense the geometry and stiffness of their adhesive environment by active contractility. For strong adhesion to flat substrates, two-dimensional contractile network models can be used to understand how force is distributed throughout…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
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…
Anchorage-dependent cells collect information on the mechanical properties of the environment through their contractile machineries and use this information to position and orient themselves. Since the probing process is anisotropic,…
Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…
When an experimentalist or a biological mechanism applies an external force onto a cell chemically sticking to its substrate, a reacting 'suction' force, due to the slow penetration of the surrounding fluid between the cell and the…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…