Related papers: Force-driven growth of intercellular junctions
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…
The motion of cells in tissues is an ubiquitous phenomenon. In particular, in monolayered cell colonies in vitro, pronounced collective behavior with swirl-like motion has been observed deep within a cell colony, while at the same time, the…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
Collective motion of cells is common in many physiological processes, including tissue development, repair, and tumor formation. Recent experiments have shown that certain malignant cancer cells form clusters in a chemoattractant gradient,…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…
Endocytosis is an essential process by which cells internalize a piece of plasma membrane and material from the outside. In cells with turgor, pressure opposes membrane defor- mations, and increases the amount of force that has to be…
Collective cell migration in cohesive units is vital for tissue morphogenesis, wound repair, and immune response. While the fundamental driving forces for collective cell motion stem from contractile and protrusive activities of individual…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
Many processes in eukaryotic cells, including cell motility, rely on the growth of branched actin networks from surfaces. Despite its central role the mechano-chemical coupling mechanisms which guide the growth process are poorly…
Cell sorting, whereby a heterogeneous cell mixture segregates and forms distinct homogeneous tissues, is one of the main collective cell behaviors at work during development. Although differences in interfacial energies are recognized to be…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
Binding interactions between proteins and other molecules mediate numerous cellular processes, including metabolism, signaling, and regulation of gene expression. These interactions evolve in response to changes in the protein's chemical or…
Hayashi and Carthew (Nature 431 [2004], 647) have shown that the packing of cone cells in the Drosophila retina resembles soap bubble packing, and that changing E- and N-cadherin expression can change this packing, as well as cell shape.…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
We report on the onset of fluid entrainment when a contact line is forced to advance over a dry solid of arbitrary wettability. We show that entrainment occurs at a critical advancing speed beyond which the balance between capillary,…
Collective cell migration governs a range of physiological and pathological processes, from tissue morphogenesis to cancer invasion, in which topological defects arise as an inevitable consequence of frequent cellular rearrangement and…
Branched actin networks exert pushing forces in eukaryotic cells, and adapt their stiffness to their environment. The physical basis for their mechanics and adaptability is however not understood. Indeed, here we show that their high…
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…
We suggest a 3D phase field model to describe 3D cell spreading on a flat substrate. The model is a simplified version of a minimal model that was developed in [1]. Our model couples the order parameter $u$ with 3D polarization…