Related papers: Maximum velocity of self-propulsion for an active …
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
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…
Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…
Migrating cells exhibit various motility patterns, resulting from different migration mechanisms, cell properties, or cell-environment interactions. The complexity of cell dynamics is reflected, e.g., in the diversity of the observed forms…
Living cells move thanks to assemblies of actin filaments and myosin motors that range from very organized striated muscle tissue to disordered intracellular bundles. The mechanisms powering these disordered structures are debated, and all…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
Saving energy and enhancing performance are secular preoccupations shared by both nature and human beings. In animal locomotion, flapping flyers or swimmers rely on the flexibility of their wings or body to passively increase their…
The swimming of cells, far from any boundary, can arise in the absence of long-range liquid-crystalline order within the cytoplasm, but simple models of this effect are lacking. Here we present a two-dimensional model of droplet…
Biological flapping wing fliers operate efficiently and robustly in a wide range of flight conditions and are a great source of inspiration to engineers. The unsteady aerodynamics of flapping-wings are dominated by large-scale vortical…
In the presence of an obstacle, active particles condensate into a surface "wetting" layer due to persistent motion. If the obstacle is asymmetric, a rectification current arises in addition to wetting. Asymmetric geometries are therefore…
Keratin are among the most abundant proteins in epithelial cells. Functions of the keratin network in cells are shaped by their dynamical organization. Using a collection of experimentally-driven mathematical models, different hypotheses…
We perform an analytical investigation of the cell interface dynamics in the framework of a minimal phase field model of cell motility suggested in [1], which consists of two coupled evolution equations for the order parameter and a…
The actin cytoskeleton of cells is in continuous motion due to both polymerization of new filaments and their contraction by myosin II molecular motors. Through adhesion to the substrate, such intracellular flow can be converted into cell…
We consider a free boundary model of epithelial cell migration with logistic growth and nonlinear diffusion induced by mechanical interactions. Using numerical simulations, phase plane and perturbation analysis, we find and analyse…
Active fluids operate by constantly dissipating energy at the particle level to perform a directed motion, yielding dynamics and phases without any equilibrium equivalent. The emerging behaviors have been studied extensively, yet…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
We scrutinize the temporally-resolved speed of active cargo transport in living cells, and show intermittent bursting motions. These nonlinear fluctuations follow a scaling law over several decades of time and space, the statistical…
Predictive motion planning is the key to achieve energy-efficient driving, which is one of the main benefits of automated driving. Researchers have been studying the planning of velocity trajectories, a simpler form of motion planning, for…
Cell migration in confining physiological environments relies on the concerted dynamics of several cellular components, including protrusions, adhesions with the environment, and the cell nucleus. However, it remains poorly understood how…