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Collective migration -- the directed, coordinated motion of many self-propelled agents -- is a fascinating emergent behavior exhibited by active matter that has key functional implications for biological systems. Extensive studies have…
Cells encounter a diverse array of physical and chemical signals as they navigate their natural surroundings. However, their response to the simultaneous presence of multiple cues remains elusive. Particularly, the impact of topography…
Many membrane-bound molecules in cells form small clusters. It has been hypothesized that these clusters convert an analog extracellular signal into a digital intracellular signal and that this conversion increases signaling fidelity.…
Models for chemotaxis are based on gradient sensing of individual organisms. The key contribution of Keller and Segel is showing that erratic movements of individuals may result in an accurate chemotaxis phenomenon as a group. In this paper…
Position determination in biological systems is often achieved through protein concentration gradients. Measuring the local concentration of such a protein with a spatially-varying distribution allows the measurement of position within the…
Epithelial cell clusters often move collectively on a substrate. Mechanical signals play a major role in organizing this behavior. There are a number of experimental observations in these systems which await a comprehensive explanation.…
Myxococcus xanthus cells self-organize into aligned groups, clusters, at various stages of their lifecycle. Formation of these clusters is crucial for the complex dynamic multi-cellular behavior of these bacteria. However, the mechanism…
We propose a model of mass-conserving heterogeneous nucleation to describe the dynamics of ligand-receptor binding in closed cellular compartments. When the ligand dissociation rate is small, competition among receptors for free ligands…
Cells sense environmental signals and transmit information intracellularly through changes in the abundance of molecular components. Such molecular abundances can be measured in single cells and exhibit significant heterogeneity in clonal…
The biophysical interactions between the T cell receptor (TCR) and its ligands determine the specificity of the cellular immune response. However, the immense diversity of receptors and ligands has made it challenging to discover…
The response of microbes to external signals is mediated by biochemical networks with intrinsic time scales. These time scales give rise to a memory that impacts cellular behaviour. Here we study theoretically the role of cellular memory in…
Enzyme-based systems have been shown to undergo directional motion in response to their substrate gradient. Here, we formulate a kinetic model to analyze the directional movement of an ensemble of protein molecules in response to a gradient…
Cells must continuously sense and respond to time-varying environmental stimuli. These signals are transmitted and processed by biochemical signalling networks. However, the biochemical reactions making up these networks are intrinsically…
During development, highly ordered structures emerge as cells collectively coordinate with each other. While recent advances have clarified how individual cells process and respond to external signals, understanding collective cellular…
Cell adhesion proteins are transmembrane proteins that bind cells to their environment. These proteins typically cluster into disk-shaped or linear structures. Here we show that such clustering patterns spontaneously emerge when the protein…
Cellular signaling networks have evolved to cope with intrinsic fluctuations, coming from the small numbers of constituents, and the environmental noise. Stochastic chemical kinetics equations govern the way biochemical networks process…
The creation of synthetic systems that emulate the defining properties of living matter, such as motility, gradient-sensing, signalling and replication, is a grand challenge of biomimetics. Such imitations of life crucially contain active…
One of simplest examples of navigation found in nature is run-and-tumble chemotaxis. Tumbles reorient cells randomly, and cells can drift toward attractants or away from repellents by biasing the frequency of these events. The post-tumble…
We investigate single-cell directional sensing from diffusing chemoattractant signals released by a localized source. We focus on the low-concentration regime in which receptor activity is discrete and cellular decisions are made on…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…