Related papers: Maximum velocity of self-propulsion for an active …
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
We study numerically the phases and dynamics of a dense collection of self-propelled particles with soft repulsive interactions in two dimensions. The model is motivated by recent in vitro experiments on confluent monolayers of migratory…
How much work does it cost for a propelled particle to stay localised near a stationary target, defying both thermal noise and a constant flow that would carry it away? We study the control of such a particle in finite time and find optimal…
Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…
Many eukaryotic cells use the active waving motion of flexible flagella to self-propel in viscous fluids. However, the criteria governing the selection of particular flagellar waveforms among all possible shapes has proved elusive so far.…
As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…
Epithelial monolayers are some of the best-studied models for collective cell migration due to their abundance in multicellular systems and their tractability. Experimentally, the collective migration of epithelial monolayers can be…
The motion of cells in tissues is an ubiquitous phenomenon. In particular, in monolayered cell colonies in vitro, pronounced collective behavior with swirl-like motion has been observed deep within a cell colony, while at the same time, the…
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…
Molecular motors are involved in key transport processes inside actin-based cellular protrusions. The motors carry cargo proteins to the protrusion tip which participate in regulating the actin polymerization, and play a key role in…
Power-law dwell times have been observed for molecular motors in living cells, but the origins of these trapped states are not known. We introduce a minimal model of motors moving on a two-dimensional network of filaments, and simulations…
The interface dynamics of a 3D cell immersed in a 3D extracellular matrix is investigated. We suggest a 3D generalization of a known 2D minimal phase field model suggested in [1] for the description of keratocyte motility. Our model…
While cell crawling on a solid surface is relatively well understood, and relies on substrate adhesion, some cells can also swim in the bulk, through mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Here, we propose a minimal model for in-bulk…
We investigate the transport of elastic active filaments in two-dimensional turbulence, focusing on how propulsion geometry and elasticity determine vortex trapping and transport. Using a bead-spring model with activity applied at the…
We study the force generation by a set of parallel actin filaments growing against an elastic membrane. The elastic membrane tries to stay flat and any deformation from this flat state, either caused by thermal fluctuations or due to…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…
The relationship between material properties and independent variables such as temperature, external field or time, is usually represented by a curve or surface in a multi-dimensional space. Determining such a curve or surface requires a…
Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures…
Colloidal spheres with a partial platinum surface coating perform auto-phoretic motion when suspended in hydrogen peroxide solution. We present a theoretical analysis of the self-propulsion velocity of these particles using a continuum…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…