Related papers: Maximum velocity of self-propulsion for an active …
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
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…
We investigate a continuum mechanical model for an adherent cell on two dimensional adhesive micropatterned substrates. The cell is modeled as an isotropic and homogeneous elastic material subject to uniform internal contractile stresses.…
Intercellular signaling has an important role in organism development, but not all communication occurs using the same mechanism. Here, we analyze the energy efficiency of intercellular signaling by two canonical mechanisms: diffusion of…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
To develop a minimal model for a cell moving in a crowded environment such as in tissue, we investigate the response of a liquid drop of active matter moving on a flat rigid substrate to forces applied at its boundaries. We consider two…
The propulsion of many eukaryotic cells is generated by flagella, flexible slender filaments that are actively oscillating in space and time. The dynamics of these biological appendages have inspired the design of many types of artificial…
We experimentally and numerically study the dependence of different navigation strategies regarding the effectivity of an active particle to reach a predefined target area. As the only control parameter, we vary the particle's propulsion…
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…
Amoeboid motion is a dynamic mode of cell motility essential for processes such as the immune response and wound healing. This review examines recent developments in the mathematical and computational modeling of amoeboid crawling, focusing…
Active diffusiophoresis - swimming through interaction with a self-generated, neutral, solute gradient - is a paradigm for autonomous motion at the micrometer scale. We study this propulsion mechanism within a linear response theory.…
Experiments show that the movement of eukaryotic cells is regulated by a process of phase separation of two competing enzymes on the cell membrane, that effectively amplifies shallow external gradients of chemical attractant. Notably, the…
We study a minimal model of a crawling eukaryotic cell with a chemical polarity controlled by a reaction-diffusion mechanism describing Rho GTPase dynamics. The size, shape, and speed of the cell emerge from the combination of the chemical…
Mammalian cell polarization and motility are important processes involved in many physiological and pathological phenomena, such as embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. The traditional view of mammalian cell motility…
Cell-cell adhesion plays a vital role in the development and maintenance of multicellular organisms. One of its functions is regulation of cell migration, such as occurs, e.g. during embryogenesis or in cancer. In this work, we develop a…
Cell migration is a fundamental process underlying the survival and function of both unicellular and multicellular organisms. Crawling motility in eukaryotic cells arises from cyclic protrusion and retraction driven by the cytoskeleton,…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…