Related papers: Sensing the shape of a cell with reaction-diffusio…
During cell migration, cells become polarized, change their shape, and move in response to various internal and external cues. Cell polarization is defined through the spatio-temporal organization of molecules such as PI3K or small GTPases,…
Cell polarity and movement are fundamental to many biological functions. Experimental and theoretically studies have indicated that interactions of certain proteins lead to the cell polarization which plays a key role in controlling the…
Cell polarization requires redistribution of specific proteins to the nascent front and back of a eukarytotic cell. Among these proteins are Rac and Rho, members of the small GTPase family that regulate the actin cytoskeleton. Rac promotes…
The bulk-surface wave pinning model is a reaction-diffusion system for studying cell polarisation. It is constituted by a surface reaction-diffusion equation, coupled to a bulk diffusion equation with a non-linear boundary condition. Cell…
In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…
Cued and un-cued cell polarization is a fundamental mechanism in cell biology. As an alternative to the classical Turing bifurcation, it has been proposed that the cell polarity might onset by means of the well-known phenomenon of…
Cell migration plays essential roles in development, wound healing, diseases, and in the maintenance of a complex body. Experiments in collective cell migration generally measure quantities such as cell displacement and velocity. The…
Several cellular activities, such as directed cell migration, are coordinated by an intricate network of biochemical reactions which lead to a polarised state of the cell, in which cellular symmetry is broken, causing the cell to have a…
This paper studies a bulk-surface reaction-diffusion system for cell polarization in two-dimensional domains. The model describes the formation of localized patterns through the wave-pinning mechanism, while explicitly incorporating the…
We study a minimal model of a crawling eukaryotic cell with a chemical polarity controlled by a reaction-diffusion mechanism describing Rho GTPase dynamics. The size, shape, and speed of the cell emerge from the combination of the chemical…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
When it is polarised, a cell develops an asymmetric distribution of specific molecular markers, cytoskeleton and cell membrane shape. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients of signalling…
Unravelling the physical mechanisms behind the organisation of lipid domains is a central goal in cell biology and membrane biophysics. Previous studies on cells and model lipid bilayers featuring phase-separated domains found an intricate…
The polarization and motility of eukaryotic cells depends on assembly and contraction of the actin cytoskeleton and its regulation by proteins called GTPases. The activity of GTPases causes assembly of filamentous actin (by GTPases Cdc42,…
How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback from the…
We propose a model for cell polarization as a response to an external signal which results in a system of PDEs for different variants of a protein on the cell surface and interior respectively. We study stationary states of this model in…
A cell is polarised when it has developed a main axis of organisation through the reorganisation of its cytosqueleton and its intracellular organelles. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients…
We describe and analyze a bistable reaction-diffusion (RD) model for two interconverting chemical species that exhibits a phenomenon of wave-pinning: a wave of activation of one of the species is initiated at one end of the domain, moves…
Membrane proteins are crucial in regulating biomembrane shapes and controlling the dynamic changes in membrane morphology during essential cellular processes. These proteins can localize to regions with their preferred curvatures (curvature…
This paper aims at advancing the field of electro-sensing. It exhibits the physical mechanism underlying shape perception for weakly electric fish. These fish orient themselves at night in complete darkness by employing their active…