Related papers: Excitable actin dynamics and amoeboid cell migrati…
Many diffusion processes in nature and society were found to be anomalous, in the sense of being fundamentally different from conventional Brownian motion. An important example is the migration of biological cells, which exhibits…
Actin is one of the most studied cytoskeleton proteins showing a very rich span of structures. It can self-assemble actively into dynamical structures that govern the mechanical properties of the cell, its motility and its division.…
Contractile actomyosin network flows are crucial for many cellular processes including cell division and motility, morphogenesis and transport. How local remodeling of actin architecture tunes stress production and dissipation and regulates…
Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…
Competition for resources is a fundamental constraint that guides the self-organization of natural, biological, and human systems, ranging from urban planning and ecosystem development to intracellular pattern formation. Here, we reveal…
Active force generation by actin-myosin cortex coupled to the cell membrane allows the cell to deform, respond to the environment, and mediate cell motility and division. Several membrane-bound activator proteins move along it and couple 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…
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…
The motion of self-propelled particles is modeled as a persistent random walk. An analytical framework is developed that allows the derivation of exact expressions for the time evolution of arbitrary moments of the persistent walk's…
The aim of this work is to quantify the spatio-temporal dynamics of flow-driven amoeboid locomotion in small ($\sim$100 $\mu$m) fragments of the true slime mold \phys {\it polycephalum}. In this model organism, cellular contraction drives…
Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures…
Collective cell migration in 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Migrating cells can generate active pulling forces via actin filament contraction, which are transmitted to the ECM…
Cell migration is a fundamental process for life and is highly dependent on the dynamical and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton. Intensive physical and biochemical crosstalk between actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments…
Developing tissues need to pattern themselves in space and time. A prevalent mechanism to achieve this are pulsatile active stresses generated by the actin cytoskeleton. Active gel theory is a powerful tool to model the dynamics of…
Viewed under a fluorescence microscope, the actomyosin cytoskeleton presents vivid streaks of lines together with persistent oscillatory waves. Using an active hydrodynamic approach, we show how a uniform distribution of single or mixture…
Many cells exhibit large-scale active circulation of their entire fluid contents, a process termed cytoplasmic streaming. This phenomenon is particularly prevalent in plant cells, often presenting strikingly regimented flow patterns. The…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…