Related papers: Persistence-driven durotaxis: Generic, directed mo…

Chemotaxis and haptotaxis have been a main theme in the macroscopic study of bacterial and cellular motility. In this work we investigate the influence these processes have on the shape and motility of fast migrating cells. We note that…

The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…

Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is important to…

We study a continuum model of dislocation transport in order to investigate the formation of heterogeneous dislocation patterns. We propose a physical mechanism which relates the formation of heterogeneous patterns to the dynamics of a…

In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…

Persistence in spatially extended dynamical systems (like coarsening systems and other nonequilibrium systems) is reviewed. We discuss, in particular, the spatial correlations in the persistent regions and their evolution in time in these…

The collective chemotaxis of multicellular clusters is an important phenomenon in various physiological contexts, ranging from embryonic development to cancer metastasis. Such clusters often display interesting shape dynamics and…

Many biological active agents respond to gradients of environmental cues by redirecting their motion. Besides the well-studied prominent examples such as photo- and chemotaxis, there has been considerable recent interest in topotaxis, i.e.\…

We extend a model for the morphology and dynamics of a crawling eukaryotic cell to describe cells on micropatterned substrates. This model couples cell morphology, adhesion, and cytoskeletal flow in response to active stresses induced by…

Biological tissues are active materials whose non-equilibrium dynamics emerge from distinct cellular force-generating mechanisms. Using a two-dimensional active foam model, we compare the effects of traction forces and junctional tension…

Single and collective cell migration are fundamental processes critical for physiological phenomena ranging from embryonic development and immune response to wound healing and cancer metastasis. To understand cell migration from a physical…

Locomotion is essential for living cells. It enables bacteria and algae to explore space for food, cancer to spread, and immune system to fight infections. Motile cells display trajectories of intriguing complexity, from regular (e.g.…

In biological systems, the growth of cells, tissues, and organs is influenced by mechanical cues. Locally, cell growth leads to a mechanically heterogeneous environment as cells pull and push their neighbors in a cell network. Despite this…

Motivated by recent advances in the investigation of fluctuation-driven ratchets and flows in excited granular media, we have carried out experimental and simulational studies to explore the horizontal transport of granular particles in a…

Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…

Bacteria often traverse confined spaces to perform critical functions in symbiosis, infection, drug delivery, and soil bioremediation. While the canonical run-and-tumble strategy enables exploration, its reliance on constant sensing and…

In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…

Motor proteins display widely different stepping patterns as they move on microtubule tracks, from the deterministic linear or helical motion performed by the protein kinesin to the uncoordinated random steps made by dynein. How these…

We study the behavior of the stationary velocity of a driven particle in an environment of mobile hard-core obstacles. Based on a lattice gas model, we demonstrate analytically that the drift velocity can exhibit a nonmonotonic dependence…

We study the motion of elastic networks driven over a random substrate. Our model which includes local friction forces leads to complex dynamical behavior. We find a transition to a sliding state which belongs to a new universality class.…