Related papers: Leader-cell-driven epithelial sheet fingering

We develop a model of amoeboid cell motility based on active gel theory. Modeling the motile apparatus of a eukaryotic cell as a confined layer of finite length of poroelastic active gel permeated by a solvent, we first show that, due to…

Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…

Controlling the collective motion of epithelial cell populations is fundamental for understanding multicellular self-organization and for advancing tissue engineering. Under spatial confinement, cells are known to exhibit either vortex…

The maintenance of tissue and organ structures during dynamic homeostasis is often not well understood. In order for a system to be stable, cell renewal, cell migration and cell death must be finely balanced. Moreover, a tissue's shape must…

We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…

The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…

Despite its high prevalence and impact on the lives of those affected, a complete understanding of the cause of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is lacking. In this paper, we investigate a novel mechanism which proposes that mutant…

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…

Crawling cell motility is vital to many biological processes such as wound healing and the immune response. Using a minimal model we investigate the effects of patterned substrate adhesiveness and biophysical cell parameters on the…

Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…

Complex biological processes involve collective behavior of entities (bacteria, cells, animals) over many length and time scales and can be described by discrete models that track individuals or by continuum models involving densities and…

We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…

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…

The importance of collective cellular migration during embryogenesis and tissue repair asks for a sound understanding of underlying principles and mechanisms. Here, we address recent in vitro experiments on cell monolayers which show that…

Epithelial cell monolayers show remarkable displacement and velocity correlations over distances of ten or more cell sizes that are reminiscent of supercooled liquids and active nematics. We show that many observed features can be described…

Protrusions at the leading-edge of a cell play an important role in sensing the extracellular cues, during cellular spreading and motility. Recent studies provided indications that these protrusions wrap (coil) around the extra-cellular…

We present a novel flow instability that can arise in thin films of cytoskeletal fluids if the friction with the substrate on which the film lies is sufficiently strong. We consider a two dimensional, membrane-bound fragment containing…

We analyse a multi-phase field model for an epithelial monolayer with pairwise adhesions between neighbouring cells following an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, representing the stochastic turnover of junctional molecular motors. These…

In development and homeostasis, multi-cellular systems exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity in their biochemical and mechanical properties. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how spatiotemporally heterogeneous forces affect the…

We develop a continuum theory to describe the collective dynamics of deformable epithelial cells, using two tensor order parameters to distinguish the force-generating active filaments in the cells from their shape. The theory demonstrates…