Related papers: Living cells on the move
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
One approach to quantifying biological diversity consists of characterizing the statistical distribution of specific properties of a taxonomic group or habitat. Microorganisms living in fluid environments, and for whom motility is key,…
Active turbulence arises typically in systems ranging from microorganisms and biopolymers to synthetic colloids, where chaotic flows are closely associated with motile topological defects in collectively swarming suspensions. Here, we…
Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…
The investigation of collective behaviour in dense assemblies of self-propelled active particles has been motivated by a wide range of biological phenomena. Of particular interest are dynamical transitions of cellular and sub-cellular…
The symmetry breaking of the actin network from radial to longitudinal symmetry has been identified as the major mechanism for keratocytes (fish cells) motility on solid substrate. For strong friction coefficient, the two dimensional actin…
Scientists have observed and studied diffusive waves in contexts as disparate as population genetics and cell signaling. Often, these waves are propagated by discrete entities or agents, such as individual cells in the case of cell…
Growth in confined spaces can drive cellular populations through a jamming transition from a fluid-like state to a solid-like state. Experiments have found that jammed budding yeast populations can build up extreme compressive pressures…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
The mechanisms driving the collective movement of cells remain poorly understood. To contribute toward resolving this mystery, a model was formulated to theoretically explore the possible functions of polarized cell-cell adhesion in…
A simple model is studied for the chemotactic movement of biological cells in the presence of a periodic chemical wave. It incorporates the feature of adaptation that may play an important role in allowing for ``rectified" chemotaxis:…
Flow networks are fundamental for understanding systems such as animal and plant vasculature or power distribution grids. These networks can encode, transmit, and transform information embodied in the spatial and temporal distribution of…
The nonlinear interaction of waves in a driven medium may lead to wave turbulence, a state such that energy is transferred from large to small lengthscales. Here, wave turbulence is observed in experiments on a vibrating plate. The…
Eukaryotic cell motility is crucial during development, wound healing, the immune response, and cancer metastasis. Some eukaryotic cells can swim, but cells more commonly adhere to and crawl along the extracellular matrix. We study the…
The periodic swarming of bacteria is one of the simplest examples for pattern formation produced by the self-organized collective behavior of a large number of organisms. In the spectacular colonies of Proteus mirabilis (the most common…
Planktonic active matter represents an emergent system spanning different scales: individual, population and community; and complexity arising from sub-cellular and cellular to collective and ecosystem scale dynamics. This cross-scale…
The complex spatiotemporal flow patterns in living tissues, driven by active forces, have many of the characteristics associated with inertial turbulence even though the Reynolds number is extremely low. Analyses of experimental data from…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
Oscillations represent a ubiquitous phenomenon in biological systems. The conventional models of biological periodic oscillations are usually proposed as interconnecting transcriptional feedback loops. Some specific proteins function as…
Strongly correlated many-body systems often display the emergence of simple patterns and regular behaviour of their global properties. Phenomena such as clusterization, collective motion and appearance of shell structures are commonly…