Related papers: Cell motility as an energy minimization process
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
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…
The conditions under which biological cells switch from a static to a motile state are fundamental to the understanding of many healthy and pathological processes. In this paper, we show that even in the presence of a fully symmetric…
Mobile microscopic bodies, such as motile cells, can be modelled phenomenologically as ``active particles'' which can move against external forces by depleting an internal energy depot. The microscopic mechanisms underlying such ``active''…
Living cells exhibit multi-mode transport that switches between an active, self-propelled motion and a seemingly passive, random motion. Cellular decision-making over transport mode switching is a stochastic process that depends on the…
The phase transition kinetics in three phase systems was investigated using the numerically efficient cell dynamics method. A phasefield model with a simple analytical free energy and single order parameter was used to study the kinetics…
Developmental dynamics of multicellular organism is a process that takes place in a multi-stable system in which each attractor state represents a cell type and attractor transitions correspond to cell differentiation paths. This new…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For cells crawling on hard surfaces, significant insights into…
The present article is an invited contribution to the Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science, Robert A. Meyers Ed., Springer New York (2009). It is a review of the biophysical mechanisms that underly cell motility. It mainly focuses…
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…
Motility initiation in crawling cells requires transformation of a symmetric state into a polarized state. In contrast, motility arrest is associated with re-symmetrization of the internal configuration of a cell. Experiments on keratocytes…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
Substrate-based cell motility is essential for fundamental biological processes, such as tissue growth, wound healing and immune response. Even if a comprehensive understanding of this motility mode remains elusive, progress has been…
Routinely navigating through an ever-changing and unsteady environment, and utilizing chemical energy, molecular motors transport the cell's crucial components, such as neurotransmitters and organelles. They generate force and pull cargo,…
One of the fundamental cellular processes governed by genetic regulatory networks in cells is the transition among different states under the intrinsic and extrinsic noise. Based on a two-state genetic switching model with positive…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Living systems often exhibit internal driving: active, molecular processes drive nonequilibrium phenomena such as metabolism or migration. Active gels constitute a fascinating class of internally driven matter, where molecular motors exert…
Intracellular cargos which are transported by molecular motors move stochastically along cytoskeleton filaments. In particular for bidirectionally transported cargos it is an open question whether the characteristics of their motion can…