Related papers: What do cells regulate in soft tissues on short ti…
Convergence extension, the simultaneous elongation of tissue along one axis while narrowing along a perpendicular axis, occurs during embryonic development. A fundamental process that contributes to shaping the organism, it happens in many…
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
Mechanical oscillations are important for many cellular processes, e.g. the beating of cilia and flagella or the sensation of sound by hair cells. These dynamic states originate from spontaneous oscillations of molecular motors. A…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
To maintain renewing epithelial tissues in a healthy, homeostatic state, (stem) cell divisions and differentiation need to be tightly regulated. Mechanisms of homeostatic control often rely on crowding control: cells are able to sense the…
We propose a mechanism for mechanical regulation at the membrane of living cells, based on the exchange of membrane area between the cell membrane and a membrane reservoir. The reservoir is composed of invaginated membrane microdomains…
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…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
Biological systems perform an astonishing array of dynamical processes -- including development and repair, regulation, behavior and motor control, sensing and signaling, and adaptation, among others. Powered by the transduction of stored…
A mathematical model is proposed for shape evolution and locomotion of fish epidermal keratocytes on elastic substrates. The model is based on mechanosensing concepts: cells apply contractile forces onto the elastic substrate, while cell…
Recent experiments in various cell types have shown that two-dimensional tissues often display local nematic order, with evidence of extensile stresses manifest in the dynamics of topological defects. Using a mesoscopic model where tissue…
The growth of a tissue, which depends on cell-cell interactions and biologically relevant process such as cell division and apoptosis, is regulated by a mechanical feedback mechanism. We account for these effects in a minimal…
Feedback loops are essential for regulating cell proliferation and maintaining the delicate balance between cell division and cell death. Thanks to the exact solution of a few simple models of cell growth it is by now clear that stochastic…
Recent studies in mammalian hearts show that left ventricular wall thickening is an important mechanism for systolic ejection and that during contraction the cardiac muscle develops significant stresses in the muscular cross-fiber…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
In Part I of this article we have developed a novel mechanobiological model of a Tissue Engineering process that accounts for the mechanisms through which an isotropic or anisotropic adherence condition regulates the active functions of the…
Biopolymer Networks play an important role in coordinating and regulating collective cellular dynamics via a number of signaling pathways. Here, we investigate the mechanical response of a model biopolymer network due to the active…
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…