Related papers: Collective force generation by groups of migrating…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
We propose an alternative mechanism for intracellular cargo transport which results from motor induced longitudinal fluctuations of cytoskeletal microtubules (MT). The longitudinal fluctuations combined with transient cargo binding to the…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
Coordinated rotational motion is an intriguing, yet still elusive mode of collective cell migration, which is relevant in pathological and morphogenetic processes. Most of the studies on this topic have been carried out on confined…
Many bacteria are motile by means of one or more rotating rigid helical flagella, making them the only known organism to use rotation as a means of propulsion. The rotation is supplied by the bacterial flagellar motor, a particularly…
Myosin II isoforms with varying mechanochemistry and filament size interact with filamentous actin (F-actin) networks to generate contractile forces in cells. How their properties control force production in environments with varying…
Flocking, as paradigmatically exemplified by birds, is the coherent collective motion of active agents. As originally conceived, flocking emerges through alignment interactions between the agents. Here, we report that flocking can also…
Biological functionality of cellular aggregates is largely influenced by the activity and displacements of individual constituent cells. From a theoretical perspective this activity can be characterized by hydrodynamic transport…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
The colonisation of a soft passive material by motile cells such as bacteria is common in biology. The resulting colonies of the invading cells are often observed to exhibit intricate patterns whose morphology and dynamics can depend on a…
Most cells possess the capacity to locomote. Alone or collectively, this allows them to adapt, to rearrange, and to explore their surroundings. The biophysical characterization of such motile processes, in health and disease, has so far…
Various multicellular tissues show chiral morphology. Experimental studies have shown this can originate from cell chirality. However, no theory has been proposed to connect the cellular chiral torque and multicellular chiral morphogenesis.…
A new kinetic model for the dynamics of myxobacteria colonies on flat surfaces is derived formally, and first analytical and numerical results are presented. The model is based on the assumption of hard binary collisions of two different…
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…
Rippling patterns of myxobacteria appear in starving colonies before they aggregate to form fruiting bodies. These periodic traveling cell density waves arise from the coordination of individual cell reversals, resulting from an internal…
Collective cell migration in epithelia relies on cell intercalation: a local remodelling of the cellular network that allows neighbouring cells to swap their positions. Unlike foams and passive cellular fluid, in epithelial intercalation…
To understand how the mechanical properties of tissues emerge from interactions of multiple cells, we measure traction stresses of cohesive colonies of 1-27 cells adherent to soft substrates. We find that traction stresses are generally…
As cells grow and divide under a given environment, they become crowded and resources are limited, as seen in bacterial biofilms and multicellular aggregates. These cells often show strong interactions through exchanging chemicals, as in…
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…