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Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a variety of ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. These behaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cell membrane, which…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
Self-generated gradients have atttracted a lot of attention in the recent biological literature. It is considered as a robust strategy for a group of cells to find its way during a long journey. This note is intended to discuss various…
Organisms often swim through density stratified fluids. In this Letter, we investigate the dynamics of small active particles swimming in density gradients and report theoretical evidence of taxis as a result of density stratification…
We present a general theoretical framework to discuss mechanisms of morphogen transport and gradient formation in a cell layer. Trafficking events on the cellular scale lead to transport on larger scales. We discuss in particular the case…
Interfaces in tissues are ubiquitous, both between tissue and environment as well as between populations of different cell types. The propagation of an interface can be driven mechanically. % e.g. by a difference in the respective…
We study the stochastic motion of active particles that undergo spontaneous transitions between two distinct modes of motion. Each mode is characterized by a velocity distribution and an arbitrary (anti-)persistence. We present an…
Motor-driven cytoskeletal remodeling in cellular systems can often be accompanied by a diffusive-like effect at local scales, but distinguishing the contributions of the ordering process, such as active contraction of a network, from this…
We study the dynamics of membrane vesicle motor transport into dendritic spines, which are bulbous intracellular compartments in neurons that play a key role in transmitting signals between neurons. We consider the stochastic analog of the…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
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…
Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue…
Within cells, vesicles and proteins are actively transported several micrometers along the cytoskeletal filaments. The transport along microtubules is propelled by dynein and kinesin motors, which carry the cargo in opposite directions.…
Chemotaxis is a ubiquitous biological phenomenon in which cells detect a spatial gradient of chemoattractant, and then move towards the source. Here we present a position-dependent advection-diffusion model that quantitatively describes the…
We numerically study the directed version of the fixed energy sandpile. On a closed square lattice, the dynamical evolution of a fixed density of sand grains is studied. The activity of the system shows a continuous phase transition around…
In this paper we develop mathematical models for collective cell motility. Initially we develop a model using a linear diffusion-advection type equation and fit the parameters to data from cell motility assays. This approach is helpful in…
Dense suspensions of swimming bacteria are known to exhibit collective behaviour arising from the interplay of steric and hydrodynamic interactions. Unconfined suspensions exhibit transient, recurring vortices and jets, whereas those…
General discrete one-dimensional stochastic models to describe the transport of single molecules along coupled parallel lattices with period $N$ are developed. Theoretical analysis that allows to calculate explicitly the steady-state…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…