Related papers: Excitable actin dynamics and amoeboid cell migrati…
Eukaryotic cells demonstrate a wide variety of dynamic patterns of filamentous actin (F-actin) and its regulators. Some of these patterns play important roles in cell functions, such as distinct motility modes, which motivate this study. We…
Amoeboid motion is a dynamic mode of cell motility essential for processes such as the immune response and wound healing. This review examines recent developments in the mathematical and computational modeling of amoeboid crawling, focusing…
Biological functions rely on ordered structures and intricately controlled collective dynamics. In contrast to systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, order is typically established and sustained in stationary states by continuous dissipation…
Self-propelled particles serve as minimal models for emulating the dynamic self-organization of microorganisms, yet most synthetic systems remain limited to a single mode of motion, namely active Brownian particles (ABPs). Here, we present…
In vitro velocities of several cell types have been measured using computer controlled video microscopy, which allowed to record the cells' trajectories over several days. On the basis of our large data sets we show that the locomotion…
Cell migration is closely linked to cell shape, yet cell size is often assumed to remain constant. This assumption is challenged by recent experiments showing that cells undergo volume loss during spreading and swelling upon activation,…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
Cancer cells exhibit increased motility and proliferation, which are instrumental in the formation of tumours and metastases. These pathological changes can be traced back to malfunctions of cellular signalling pathways, and calcium…
Intracellular transport is vital for the proper functioning and survival of a cell. Cargo (proteins, vesicles, organelles, etc.) is transferred from its place of creation to its target locations via molecular motor assisted transport along…
Nuclei import and export proteins, including cell cycle regulators. These import-export processes are modulated periodically by the cell cycle, for example due to the periodic assembly and breakdown of the nuclear envelope. As such,…
Spontaneous directed motion, a hallmark of cell biology, is unusual in classical statistical physics. Here we study, using both numerical and analytical methods, organized motion in models of the cytoskeleton in which constituents are…
The biopolymers actin and microtubules are often in an ongoing assembling/disassembling state far from thermal equilibrium. Above a critical density this leads to spatially periodic patterns, as shown by a scaling argument and in terms of a…
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…
Cytoskeletal filaments transported by surface immobilized molecular motors with one end pinned to the surface have been observed to spiral in a myosin-driven actin 'gliding assay'. The radius of the spiral was shown to scale with motor…
We study an active random walker model in which a particle's motion is determined by a self-generated field. The field encodes information about the particle's path history. This leads to either self-attractive or self-repelling behavior.…
Cell crawling is critical to biological development, homeostasis and disease. In many cases, cell trajectories are quasi-random-walk. In vitro assays on flat surfaces often described such quasi-random-walk cell trajectories as…
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…
In many organisms, cell division is driven by the constriction of a cytokinetic ring, which consists of actin filaments and crosslinking proteins. While it has long been believed that the constriction is driven by motor proteins, it has…
Collective cell migration plays an essential role in vertebrate development, yet the extent to which dynamically changing microenvironments influence this phenomenon remains unclear. Observations of the distribution of the extracellular…