Related papers: Physics of adherent cells
The friction and adhesion between elastic bodies are strongly influenced by the roughness of the surfaces in contact. Here we develop a multiscale molecular dynamics approach to contact mechanics, which can be used also when the surfaces…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
The paper present a model for the drag force between a resistive medium and a solid body using the hypothesis that the drag force is created by the adhesion of some particles of the resistive medium on the solid body's surface. The study…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
Intermolecular forces are known to precipitate adhesion events between solid bodies. Inspired by a macro-scale experiment showing the hysteretic adhesion of a piece of flexible tape over a plastic substrate, we develop here a model of…
How can dense biological tissue maintain sharp boundaries between coexisting cell populations? We explore this question within a simple vertex model for cells, focusing on the role of topology and tissue surface tension. We show that the…
Biomimetic membranes in contact with a planar substrate or a second membrane are studied theoretically. The membranes contain specific adhesion molecules (stickers) which are attracted by the second surface. In the absence of stickers, the…
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…
It is known that mechanical interactions couple a cell to its neighbors, enabling a feedback loop to regulate tissue growth. However, the interplay between cell-cell adhesion strength, local cell density and force fluctuations in regulating…
Tissues are characterized by layers of functional units such as cells and extracellular matrix (ECM). Nevertheless, how dynamics at interlayer interfaces help transmit cellular forces in tissues remains overlooked. Here, we investigate a…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
The mechanisms driving the collective movement of cells remain poorly understood. To contribute toward resolving this mystery, a model was formulated to theoretically explore the possible functions of polarized cell-cell adhesion in…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
Surface stresses have recently emerged as a key player in the mechanics of highly compliant solids. The classic theories of contact mechanics describe adhesion with a compliant substrate as a competition between surface energies driving…
Crumpling of a thin film leads to a unique stiff yet lightweight structure. The stiffness has been attributed to a complex interplay between four basic elements - smooth bends, sharp folds, localized points (developable cones), and…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
Cells exhibit qualitatively different behaviors on substrates with different rigidities. The fact that cells are more polarized on the stiffer substrate motivates us to construct a two-dimensional cell with the distribution of focal…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
We study a physical model for the interaction between general inclusions bound to fluid membranes that possess finite tension, as well as the usual bending rigidity. We are motivated by an interest in proteins bound to cell membranes that…