Related papers: Traction force microscopy on soft elastic substrat…
Numerous cell types relate to their immediate environment by exerting a three-dimensional pressure field on their environment, with components both longitudinal and transverse to the cell membrane. This pressure field can in principle be…
Over the last two decades, scientific literature has been blooming with various means of simulating epithelial cell colonies. Each of these simulations can be separated by their respective efficiency (expressed in terms of consumed…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
To produce sounds, we adjust the tension of our vocal folds to shape their properties and control the pitch. This efficient mechanism offers inspiration for designing reconfigurable materials and adaptable soft robots. However,…
Providing force feedback as relevant information in current Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery systems constitutes a technological challenge due to the constraints imposed by the surgical environment. In this context, Sensorless…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
A hallmark of biological tissues, viewed as complex cellular materials, is the active generation of mechanical stresses by cellular processes, such as cell divisions. Each cellular event generates a force dipole that deforms the surrounding…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Macroscopic observables of a system are of keen interest in real applications such as the design of novel materials. Current methods rely on microscopic trajectory simulations, where the forces on all microscopic coordinates need to be…
Contraction assay based on surface measurement have been widely used to evaluate cell contractility in 3D models. This method is straightforward and requires no specific equipment, but it does not provide quantitative data about contraction…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
The modeling of the elastic properties of disordered or nanoscale solids requires the foundations of the theory of elasticity to be revisited, as one explores scales at which this theory may no longer hold. The only cases for which…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
Cells within biological tissue are constantly subjected to dynamic mechanical forces. Measuring the internal stress of tissues has proven crucial for our understanding of the role of mechanical forces in fundamental biological processes…
We study interactions between biological cells that apply anisotropic active mechanical forces on an elastic substrate. We model the cells as thin discs that along their perimeters apply radial, but angle-dependent forces on the substrate.…
A common limitation of autonomous tissue manipulation in robotic minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is the absence of force sensing and control at the tool level. Recently, our team has developed miniature force-sensing forceps that can…
Mechanical forces influence the development and behavior of biological tissues. In many situations these forces are exerted or resisted by elastic compliant structures such as the own-tissue cellular matrix or other surrounding tissues.…
Tissue surface tension influences cell sorting and tissue fusion. Earlier mechanical studies suggest that multicellular spheroids actively reinforce their surface tension with applied force. Here we study this open question through…
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…
Although mechanical cues are crucial to tissue morphogenesis and development, the tissue mechanical stress field remains poorly characterized. Given traction force timelapse movies, as obtained by traction force microscopy of in vitro…