Related papers: Microtubule Motility Analysis based on Time-Lapse …
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
Multicellular tumor spheroids are an important {\it in vitro} model of the pre-vascular phase of solid tumors, for sizes well below the diagnostic limit: therefore a biophysical model of spheroids has the ability to shed light on the…
Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) -- which include skeletal stem cells -- are a promising tool in regenerative medicine. However, their heterogeneous and unpredictable in vivo behaviour remains a critical barrier preventing the development…
Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating…
During cell division paired (sister) chromosomes are observed to perform approximate saw-tooth oscillations across the cell mid-plane. Experimental data suggests that these oscillations are regulated through intersister tension. We propose…
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…
Biological activity gives rise to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the cytoplasm of cells; however, there are few methods to directly measure these fluctuations. Using a reconstituted actin cytoskeleton, we show that the bending dynamics of…
In this study, Brillouin spectroscopy was employed to investigate the viscoelastic properties of melanoma cells in vitro. Using a custom-built confocal Brillouin microspectrometer, we obtained Brillouin shifts and full width at half maximum…
Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (T cells) and natural killer cells form a tight contact, the immunological synapse (IS), with target cells, where they release their lytic granules containing perforin/granzyme and cytokine containing vesicles.…
Synthesis of protein molecules in a cell are carried out by ribosomes. A ribosome can be regarded as a molecular motor which utilizes the input chemical energy to move on a messenger RNA (mRNA) track that also serves as a template for the…
Mechanics and biochemical signaling are both often deregulated in cancer, leading to cancer cell phenotypes that exhibit increased invasiveness, proliferation, and survival. The dynamics and interactions of cytoskeletal components control…
We measure different contributions to entropy production in a living functional epithelial tissue. We do this by extracting the functional dynamics of development while at the same time quantifying fluctuations. Using the translucent…
Dynamics of nucleosomes, the building blocks of the chromatin, has crucial effects on expression, replication and repair of genomes in eukaryotes. Beside constant movements of nucleosomes by thermal fluctuations, ATP-dependent chromatin…
A hallmark of biological tissues, viewed as complex cellular materials, is the active generation of mechanical stresses by cellular processes, such as cell divisions. Each cellular event generates a force dipole that deforms the surrounding…
In previous theoretical research, we inferred that cancer stem cells (CSCs), the cells that presumably drive tumor growth and resistance to conventional cancer treatments, are not uniformly distributed in the bulk of a tumorsphere. To…
Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…
Many biological processes involve the action of molecular motors that interact with the cell cytoskeleton. Some processes, such as the transport of cargoes is achieved mainly by the action of individual motors. Other, such as cell motility…
In the present review, we describe three hot topics in cancer research such as circulating tumor cells, exosomes, and 3D environment models. The first section is dedicated to microfluidic platforms for detecting circulating tumor cells,…
A novel theoretical model of dynamic instability of a system of linear (1D) microtubules (MTs) in a bounded domain is introduced for studying the role of a cell edge in vivo and analyzing the effect of competition for a limited amount of…
Collective migration dominates many phenomena, from cell movement in living systems to abiotic self-propelling particles. Focusing on the early stages of tumor evolution, we enunciate the principles involved in cell dynamics and highlight…