Related papers: Cell reorientation under cyclic stretching
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…
Cellular reprogramming, the conversion of one cell type to another, has fundamentally transformed our conception of cell types. Cellular reprogramming induces global changes in gene expression involving hundreds of transcription factors and…
We construct a model of cell reprogramming (the conversion of fully differentiated cells to a state of pluripotency, known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs) which builds on key elements of cell biology viz. cell cycles and cell…
The cell cortex, a thin film of active material assembled below the cell membrane, plays a key role in cellular symmetry breaking processes such as cell polarity establishment and cell division. Here, we present a minimal model of the…
Animal cells use traction forces to sense the mechanics and geometry of their environment. Measuring these traction forces requires a workflow combining cell experiments, image processing and force reconstruction based on elasticity theory.…
Cells can sense forces applied to them, but also the stiffness of their environment. These are two different phenomena, and here we investigate the mechanosensitivity of the IInd kind: how the cell can measure an elastic modulus at a single…
Spatially confined rigid membranes reorganize their morphology in response to the imposed constraints. A crumpled elastic sheet presents a complex pattern of random folds focusing the deformation energy while compressing a membrane resting…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
The cell cortex is a thin layer beneath the plasma membrane that gives animal cells mechanical resistance and drives most of their shape changes, from migration, division to multicellular morphogenesis. It is mainly composed of actin…
Morphogenetic dynamics of tissue sheets require coordinated cell shape changes regulated by global patterning of mechanical forces. Inspired by such biological phenomena, we propose a minimal mechanochemical model based on the notion that…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
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…
Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…
We give a description of cell diffusion in a soft tissue, paying special attention to the coupling of force, matter, and microforce balance laws through a suitable dissipation principle. To this end, we cast our framework into a multi-level…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
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…
Cellular migration is crucial for biological processes including embryonic development, immune response, and wound healing. The myosin-clutch model is a framework that describes how cells control migration through the interactions between…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…