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Related papers: Active forces in confluent cell monolayers

200 papers

Collective cell migration in epithelia relies on cell intercalation: a local remodelling of the cellular network that allows neighbouring cells to swap their positions. Unlike foams and passive cellular fluid, in epithelial intercalation…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-10-31 Dimitrios Krommydas , Livio Nicola Carenza , Luca Giomi

Collective cell migration plays a crucial role in many developmental processes that underlie morphogenesis, wound healing, or cancer progression. In such coordinated behaviours, cells are organised in coherent structures and actively…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-06-16 Carolina Trenado , Luis L. Bonilla , Alejandro Martínez-Calvo

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2016-03-23 Takao Ohta , Mitsusuke Tarama , Masaki Sano

Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-06-09 Shiladitya Banerjee , Kazage J. C. Utuje , M. Cristina Marchetti

Quantifying the outcomes of cells collisions is a crucial step in building the foundations of a kinetic theory of living matter. Here, we develop a mechanical theory of such collisions by first representing individual cells as extended…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-12-11 Pierre Recho , Thibaut Putelat , Lev Truskinovsky

We develop a model of amoeboid cell motility based on active gel theory. Modeling the motile apparatus of a eukaryotic cell as a confined layer of finite length of poroelastic active gel permeated by a solvent, we first show that, due to…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-06-12 A. C. Callan-Jones , R. Voituriez

Growing experimental evidence indicates that topological defects could serve as organizing centers in the morphogenesis of tissues. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for this phenomenon, rooted in the buckling theory of deformable…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-04-21 Ludwig A. Hoffmann , Livio Nicola Carenza , Julia Eckert , Luca Giomi

In confluent cell monolayers, patterns of cell forces and motion are systematically altered near topological defects in cell shape. In turn, defects have been proposed to alter cell density, extrusion, and invasion, but it remains unclear…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-08-11 Pradip K. Bera , Molly McCord , Jun Zhang , Jacob Notbohm

Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-04-02 Jiayi Liu , Javier Boix-Campos , Jonathan E. Ron , Johan M. Kux , Nir S. Gov , Pablo J. Sáez

The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-08-15 Ioannis Hadjifrangiskou , Liam J. Ruske , Julia M. Yeomans

Compliant environments can mediate interactions between mechanically active cells like fibroblasts. Starting with a phenomenological model for the behaviour of single cells, we use extensive Monte Carlo simulations to predict non-trivial…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2007-05-23 I. B. Bischofs , U. S. Schwarz

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…

Biological Physics · Physics 2018-05-24 Hao Wu , Marco Avila Ponce de Leon , Hans G. Othmer

Collective cell migration is a key driver of embryonic development, wound healing, and some types of cancer invasion. Here we provide a physical perspective of the mechanisms underlying collective cell migration. We begin with a catalogue…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-10-08 Ricard Alert , Xavier Trepat

The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2018-01-24 Thibaut Putelat , Pierre Recho , Lev Truskinovsky

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…

We show that when cells communicate by contact-mediated interactions, heterogeneity in cell shapes and sizes leads to qualitatively distinct collective behavior in the tissue. For inter-cellular coupling that implements lateral inhibition,…

Tissues and Organs · Quantitative Biology 2023-01-10 Chandrashekar Kuyyamudi , Shakti N. Menon , Sitabhra Sinha

Collectively moving cellular systems often contain a proportion of dead cells or non-motile genotypes. When mixed, nematically aligning motile and non-motile agents are known to segregate spontaneously. However, the role that topological…

We study the role of active coupling on the transport properties of homogeneously charged macromolecules in an infinitely dilute solution. An enzyme becomes actively bound to a segment of the macromolecule, exerting an electrostatic force…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-05-24 Tapas Singha , Siao-Fong Li , Murugappan Muthukumar

During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-08-28 Richard G. Morris , Madan Rao

The coupling of the internal mechanisms of cell polarization to cell shape deformations and subsequent cell crawling poses many interdisciplinary scientific challenges. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to model the…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2023-11-08 Eduardo Moreno , Robert Großmann , Carsten Beta , Sergio Alonso