Related papers: Shape dynamics of growing cell walls
Cellular phenotype is characterized by different components such as cell size, protein content and cell cycle time. These are global variables that are the outcome of multiple internal microscopic processes. Accordingly, they display some…
A stochastic model is used to assess the effect of external parameters on the development of submerged biofilms on smooth and rough surfaces. The model includes basic cellular mechanisms, such as division and spreading, together with an…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
We discuss shape profiles emerging in inhomogeneous growth of squeezed tissues. Two approaches are used simultaneously: i) conformal embedding of two-dimensional domain with hyperbolic metrics into the plane, and ii) a pure energetic…
How morphogenesis depends on cell properties is an active direction of research. Here, we focus on mechanical models of growing plant tissues, where microscopic (sub)cellular structure is taken into account. In order to establish links…
The organization of live cells to tissues is associated with the mechanical interaction between cells, which is mediated through their elastic environment. We model cells as spherical active force dipoles surrounded by an infinite elastic…
Microbial growth and division are fundamental processes relevant to many areas of life science. Of particular interest are homeostasis mechanisms, which buffer growth and division from accumulating fluctuations over multiple cycles. These…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
Various rod-shaped bacteria such as the canonical gram negative Escherichia coli or the well-studied gram positive Bacillus subtilis divide symmetrically after they approximately double their volume. Their size at division is not constant,…
Vertex models have been extensively used for simulating the evolution of multicellular systems, and have given rise to important global properties concerning their macroscopic rheology or jamming transitions. These models are based on the…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Bacterial cells navigate around their environment by directing their movement along chemical gradients. This process, known as chemotaxis, can promote the rapid expansion of bacterial populations into previously unoccupied territories.…
Dynamics maintaining diversity of cell types in a multi-cellular system are studied in relationship with the plasticity of cellular states. By adopting a simple theoretical framework for intra-cellular chemical reaction dynamics with…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Various bacterial strains exhibit colonial branching patterns during growth on poor substrates. These patterns reflect bacterial cooperative self-organization and cybernetic processes of communication, regulation and control employed during…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
A cellular bleb grows when a portion of the cell membrane detaches from the underlying cortex under the influence of a cytoplasmic pressure. We develop a quantitative model for the growth and dynamics of these objects in a simple…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…