Related papers: Cellular velocity, electrical persistence and sens…

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…

Cells can show not only spontaneous movement but also tactic responses to environmental signals. Since the former can be regarded as the basis to realize the latter, playing essential roles in various cellular functions, it is important to…

Migrating cells exhibit various motility patterns, resulting from different migration mechanisms, cell properties, or cell-environment interactions. The complexity of cell dynamics is reflected, e.g., in the diversity of the observed forms…

Cell migration is an indispensable physiological and pathological process for normal tissue development and cancer metastasis, which is greatly regulated by intracellular signal pathways and extracellular microenvironment (ECM). However,…

Cells move differently on substrates with different elasticities. In particular, the persistence time of their motion is higher on stiffer substrates. We show that this behavior will result in a net transport of cells directed up a…

Biological cells are often found to sense their chemical environment near the single-molecule detection limit. Surprisingly, this precision is higher than simple estimates of the fundamental physical limit, hinting towards active sensing…

The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…

The motility of adherent eukaryotic cells is driven by the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. Despite the common force-generating actin machinery, different cell types often show diverse modes of locomotion that differ in their shape…

Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…

Eukaryotic cells are large enough to detect signals and then orient to them by differentiating the signal strength across the length and breadth of the cell. Amoebae, fibroblasts, neutrophils and growth cones all behave in this way. Little…

In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…

Diverse organisms exploit the geomagnetic field (GMF) for migration. Migrating birds employ an intrinsically quantum mechanical mechanism for detecting the geomagnetic field: absorption of a blue photon generates a radical pair whose two…

Since a long time the application of small electric potentials on biological membranes (iontophoresis) proved enabling control and improvement of transdermal delivery of substances across this barrier. In spite of a large experimental data,…

Cell migration is a fundamental process underlying the survival and function of both unicellular and multicellular organisms. Crawling motility in eukaryotic cells arises from cyclic protrusion and retraction driven by the cytoskeleton,…

Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…

Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…

Cell shape has long been used to discern cell phenotypes and states, but the underlying premise has not been quantitatively tested. Here, we show that a single cell image can be used to discriminate its migration behavior by analyzing a…

Motile eukaryotic cells display distinct modes of migration that often occur within the same cell type. It remains unclear, however, whether transitions between the migratory modes require changes in external conditions, or whether the…

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…

Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…