Related papers: Cell Motility Dependence on Adhesive Wetting
The interaction of the actin cytoskeleton with cell-substrate adhesions is necessary for cell migration. While the trajectories of motile cells have a stochastic character, investigations of cell motility mechanisms rarely elaborate on the…
Migration of animal cells is based on the interplay between actin polymerization at the front, adhesion along the cell-substrate interface, and actomyosin contractility at the back. Active gel theory has been used before to demonstrate that…
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…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Cells sense the geometry and stiffness of their adhesive environment by active contractility. For strong adhesion to flat substrates, two-dimensional contractile network models can be used to understand how force is distributed throughout…
The crawling motion of Dictyostelium discoideum on substrata involves a number of coordinated events including cell contractions and cell protrusions. The mechanical forces exerted on the substratum during these contractions have recently…
We present a single, unified, multi-scale model to study the attachment\detachment dynamics of two deforming, near spherical cells, coated with binding ligands and subject to a slow, homogeneous shear flow in a viscous fluid medium. The…
Mechanical cues like the rigidity of the substrate are main determinants for the decision making of adherent cells. Here we use a mechano-chemical model to predict the cellular response to varying substrate stiffness. The model equations…
Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For cells crawling on hard surfaces, significant insights into…
Cell-cell contacts in tissues are continuously subject to mechanical forces due to homeostatic pressure and active cytoskeleton dynamics. While much is known about the molecular pathways of adhesion, the role of mechanics is less well…
Transition from random to persistent cell motility requires spatiotemporal organization of the cytoskeleton and focal adhesions. The influence of these two structures on cell steering can also be gleaned from trypsin de-adhesion…
There is compelling evidence that substrate stiffness affects cell adhesion as well as cytoskeleton organization and contractile activity. This work was designed to study the cytoskeletal contractile activity of cells plated on microposts…
Cell cell and cell matrix adhesions are fundamental in all multicellular organisms. They play a key role in cellular growth, differentiation, pattern formation and migration. Cell-cell adhesion is substantial in the immune response,…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
During migration cells exhibit a rich variety of seemingly random migration patterns, which makes unraveling the underlying mechanisms that control cell migration a daunting challenge. For efficient migration cells require a mechanism for…
Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Tissue surface tension influences cell sorting and tissue fusion. Earlier mechanical studies suggest that multicellular spheroids actively reinforce their surface tension with applied force. Here we study this open question through…
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,…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…