Related papers: Physics of adherent cells
Epithelial cell layers on soft elastic substrates or pillar arrays are commonly used as model systems for investigating the role of force in tissue growth, maintenance and repair. Here we show analytically that the experimentally observed…
Understanding mechanosensitivity, i.e. how cells sense the stiffness of their environment is very important, yet there is a fundamental difficulty in understanding its mechanism: to measure an elastic modulus one requires two points of…
Understanding how to produce forces using biomolecular building blocks is essential for the development of adaptive synthetic cells and living materials. Here we ask whether a dynamic polymer system can generate deformation forces in soft…
We study the adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces. We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the interfacial stress distribution and the wall-wall separation. We compare…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
We present a minimal continuum model of strongly adhering cells as active contractile isotropic media and use the model to study the effect of the geometry of the adhesion patch in controlling the spatial distribution of traction and…
Cell membranes are studded with protrusions that were thoroughly analyzed with electron microscopy. However, the nanometer-scale three-dimensional motions generated by cell membranes to fit the topography of foreign surfaces and initiate…
Thermodynamics tells us to expect underwater contact between two hydrophobic surfaces to result in stronger adhesion compared to two hydrophilic surfaces. However, presence of water changes not only energetics, but also the dynamic process…
We study the influence of the surface energy and contamination films on rubber adhesion and sliding friction. We find that there is a transfer of molecules from the rubber to the substrate which reduces the work of adhesion and makes the…
Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…
Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…
We derive a connection between the intrinsic tribological properties and the electronic properties of a solid interface. In particular, we show that the adhesion and frictional forces are dictated by the electronic charge redistribution…
Cells are modeled with spherical grains connected each other. Each cell can shrink and swell by transporting its fluid content to other connected neighbor while still maintaining its density at constant value. As a spherical part of a cell…
Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…
We report the simultaneous characterization of time- and force-dependent mechanical properties of adherent cells in the physiologically relevant regime of large forces. We used magnetic tweezers to apply forces to magnetic beads bound to…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…