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Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
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…
We report the simultaneous characterization of time- and force-dependent mechanical properties of adherent cells in the physiologically relevant regime of large forces. We used magnetic tweezers to apply forces to magnetic beads bound to…
An adequate control of cell response in tissue engineering applications is of utmost importance to obtain products suitable to clinical practice. This paper is the first part of a series of two connected publications in which we study via…
Collective cell migration is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Recent experimental studies have indicated that the active traction forces generated by migrating cells in fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) can…
Collective cell migration is a hallmark of developmental and patho-physiological states, including wound healing and invasive cancer growth. The integrity of the expanding epithelial sheets can be influenced by extracellular cues, including…
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…
Contractile biopolymer networks, such as the actomyosin meshwork of animal cells, are ubiquitous in living organisms. The active gel theory, which provides the thermodynamic framework for these materials, has been mostly used in conjunction…
One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces generated by contractile polymer bundles and networks,…
In-vivo, cells are frequently exposed to multiple mechanical stimuli arising from the extracellular microenvironment, with deep impact on many biological functions. On the other hand, current methods for mechanobiology do not allow to…
Embryonic development involves pattern formation characterized by the emergence of spatially localized domains characterized by distinct cell fates resulting from differential gene expression. The boundaries demarcating these domains are…
The clonal expansion of T cells during an infection is tightly regulated to ensure an appropriate immune response against invading pathogens. Although experiments have mapped the trajectory from expansion to contraction, the interplay…
The reaction-diffusion models have been extensively applied to explain the mechanism of pattern formations in early embryogenesis based on geometrically confined microtissues consisting of human pluripotent stem cells. Recently, mechanical…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
Endocytosis is an essential process by which cells internalize a piece of plasma membrane and material from the outside. In cells with turgor, pressure opposes membrane defor- mations, and increases the amount of force that has to be…
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and scope of this…
From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…
We investigate theoretically the effect of polymer tension on the collective behavior of reversibly binding cross-links. For this purpose, we employ a model of two weakly bending wormlike chains aligned in parallel by a tensile force, with…
Transitions from quiescence to collective migration in epithelia underlie wound healing and cancer invasion, yet their physical origin remains poorly understood. Here we show that quiescent epithelial monolayers store spatially contractile…