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Collective cell migration is a multicellular phenomenon that arises in various biological contexts, including cancer and embryo development. "Collectiveness" can be promoted by cell-cell interactions such as co-attraction and contact…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
Cell migration in morphogenesis and cancer metastasis typically involves interplay between different cell types. We construct and study a minimal, one-dimensional model comprised of two different motile cells with each cell represented as…
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin…
Many cell types display random motility on two-dimensional substrates, but crawl persistently in a single direction when confined in a microchannel or on an adhesive micropattern. Does this imply that the motility mechanism of confined…
The dynamic interplay between collective cell movement and the various molecules involved in the accompanying cell signalling mechanisms plays a crucial role in many biological processes including normal tissue development and pathological…
Eukaryotic cells and intracellular pathogens such as bacteria or viruses utilize the actin polymerization machinery to propel themselves forward. Thereby, the onset of motion and choice of direction may be the result of a spontaneous…
We present a new kinetic equation for cell migration driven by mechanical interactions with the substrate, an effect not previously captured in kinetic models, and essential for explaining observed collective behaviors such as those in…
Rotational migration is one specific form of collective cell migration when epithelial cells are confined in a spherical geometry, such as in the epithelial acini. This tissue-level rotation motion is crucial for the morphogenesis of…
We present a minimal continuum model of strongly adhering cells as active contractile isotropic media and use the model to study the effect of the geometry of the adhesion patch in controlling the spatial distribution of traction and…
Myxococcus xanthus is a model organism for studying bacterial social behaviors due to its ability to form complex multi-cellular structures. Knowledge of M. xanthus surface gliding motility and the mechanisms that coordinate it are…
Based on experimental observations it is known that various biological cells exhibit a persistent random walk during migration on flat substrates. The persistent random walk is characterized by `stop-and-go' movements : unidirectional…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
The cooperative action of many molecular motors is essential for dynamic processes such as cell motility and mitosis. This action can be studied by using motility assays in which the motion of cytoskeletal filaments over a surface coated…
The actin cytoskeleton is a key component in the machinery of eukaryotic cells, and it selfassembles out of equilibrium into a wide variety of biologically crucial structures. While the molecular mechanisms involved are well characterized,…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
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…
Myosin II molecular motors slide actin filaments relatively to each other and are essential for force generation, motility and mechanosensing in animal cells. For non-muscle cells, evolution has resulted in three different isoforms, which…
Cell motility is one of the most fundamental phenomena underlying biological processes that maintain living organisms alive. Here we introduce a simple model to describe the motility of cells which include not only time-correlated internal…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…