Related papers: Enhanced persistence and collective migration in c…
Cell migration is essential for regulating many biological processes in physiological or pathological conditions, including embryonic development and cancer invasion. In vitro and in silico studies suggest that collective cell migration is…
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…
Single eukaryotic cells commonly sense and follow chemical gradients, performing chemotaxis. Recent experiments and theories, however, show that even when single cells do not chemotax, clusters of cells may, if their interactions are…
Cancer cell migration between different body parts is the driving force behind cancer metastasis, which is the main cause of mortality of patients. Migration of cancer cells often proceeds by penetration through narrow cavities in locally…
Aberrantly regulated cell motility is a hallmark of cancer cells. A hybrid agent-based model has been developed to investigate the synergistic and antagonistic cell motility-impacting effects of three microenvironment variables…
The spontaneous formation of vortices is a hallmark of collective cellular activity. Here, we study the onset and persistence of coherent angular motion (CAMo) as a function of the number of cells $N$ confined in circular micropatterns. We…
The colonisation of a soft passive material by motile cells such as bacteria is common in biology. The resulting colonies of the invading cells are often observed to exhibit intricate patterns whose morphology and dynamics can depend on a…
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…
Cancer cells are known to modify their micro-environment such that it can sustain a larger population, or, in ecological terms, they construct a niche which increases the carrying capacity of the population. It has however been argued that…
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,…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Cells in an epithelial monolayer coordinate motion with their neighbors giving rise to collectively moving packs of sizes spanning multiple cell diameters. The physical mechanism controlling the pack size, however, remains unclear. A…
Collective cell migration contributes to embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. Cell monolayer migration experiments help understanding what determines the movement of cells far from the leading edge. Inhibiting cell…
A variety of living and non-living systems exhibit collective motion. From swarm robotics to bacterial swarms, and tissue wound healing to human crowds, examples of collective motion are highly diverse but all of them share the common…
In many cellular signaling pathways, key components form clusters at the cell membrane. Although much work has focused on the mechanisms behind such cluster formation, the implications for downstream signaling remain poorly understood.…
Coordinated rotational motion is an intriguing, yet still elusive mode of collective cell migration, which is relevant in pathological and morphogenetic processes. Most of the studies on this topic have been carried out on confined…
Collective migration of eukaryotic cells is often guided by chemotaxis, and is critical in several biological processes, such as cancer metastasis, wound healing, and embryogenesis. Understanding collective chemotaxis has challenged…
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…
Substrate-based cell motility is essential for fundamental biological processes, such as tissue growth, wound healing and immune response. Even if a comprehensive understanding of this motility mode remains elusive, progress has been…
Cells are dynamic systems characterized by temporal variations in biophysical properties such as stiffness and contractility. Recent studies show that the recruitment and release of actin filaments into and out of the cell cortex - a…