Related papers: Border forces and friction control epithelial clos…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Chronic wounds represent a major public health problem affecting 6.5 million people in the United States. Ischemia represents a serious complicating factor in wound healing. In this paper we analyze a recently developed mathematical model…
Understanding how cells escape from embedded spheroids requires a mechanical framework linking stress generation within cells, across cells, and between cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). We develop such a framework by…
Epithelial cells can assemble into cohesive colonies and collectively interact with substrates by generating extracellular forces through focal adhesions. Recently, a molecularly based thermodynamic model, which integrates both the…
We formulate a Hele-Shaw type free boundary problem for a tumor growing under the combined effects of pressure forces, cell multiplication and active motion, the latter being the novelty of the present paper. This new ingredient is…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
Recent work on particle-based models of tissues has suggested that any finite rate of cell division and cell death is sufficient to fluidize an epithelial tissue. At the same time, experimental evidence has indicated the existence of glassy…
We study the influence of cell-level mechanical heterogeneity in epithelial tissues using a vertex-based model. Heterogeneity in single cell stiffness is introduced as a quenched random variable in the preferred shape index($p_0$) for each…
In this paper, we propose a tumor growth model to incorporate and investigate the spatial effects of autophagy. The cells are classified into two phases: normal cells and autophagic cells, whose dynamics are also coupled with the nutrients.…
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…
Wounds in the embryo show a remarkable ability to heal quickly without leaving a scar. Previous studies have found that an actomyosin ring ("purse string") forms around the wound perimeter and contracts to close the wound over the course of…
We study the mechanics of a reversible decohesion (unzipping) of an elastic layer subjected to quasi-static end-point loading. At the micro level the system is simulated by an elastic chain of particles interacting with a rigid foundation…
Membrane wrapping underlies nanoparticle uptake during endocytosis, whereas the reverse process of membrane unwrapping accompanies particle expulsion and membrane fusion events. Existing theoretical descriptions typically focus on adhesion…
Tumor spheroids are in vitro three-dimensional, cellular collectives consisting of cancerous cells. Embedding these spheroids in an in vitro fibrous environment, such as a collagen network, to mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM) provides…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…
In multicellular organisms, epithelial cells form layers separating compartments responsible for different physiological functions. At the early stage of epithelial layer formation, each cell of an aggregate defines an inner and an outer…
We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…
A number of factors, such as, cell-cell interactions and self-propulsion of cells driven by cytoskeletal forces determine tissue morphologies and dynamics. To explore the interplay between these factors in controlling the dynamics at the…
As a fundamental force, friction exerts a profound influence on various aspects of our daily lives across multiple disciplines. To understand why adhesive friction is associated with the contact area, here we investigate the generic sliding…