Related papers: Cell motility as an energy minimization process
Minimal models of active and driven particles have recently been used to elucidate many properties non-equilibrium systems. However, the relation between energy consumption and changes in the structure and transport properties of these…
Motility is characteristic of life, but a common basis for movement has remained to be identified. Diverse systems in motion shift between two states depending on interactions that turnover at the rate of an applied cycle of force. Although…
There are numerous scenarios in which populations of cells migrate in crowded environments. Typical examples include wound healing, cancer growth and embryo development. In these crowded environments cells are able to interact with each…
The cell cortex is a thin layer beneath the plasma membrane that gives animal cells mechanical resistance and drives most of their shape changes, from migration, division to multicellular morphogenesis. It is mainly composed of actin…
Systems of soft-core particles interacting via a two-scale potential are studied. The potential is responsible for peaks in the structure factor of the liquid state at two different but comparable length scales, and a similar bimodal…
We analyze a simple stochastic model to describe motor molecules which cooperate in large groups and present a physical mechanism which can lead to oscillatory motion if the motors are elastically coupled to their environment. Beyond a…
Cellular behavior is governed by gene regulatory processes that are intrinsically dynamic and nonlinear, and are subject to non-negligible amounts of random fluctuations. Such conditions are ubiquitous in physical systems, where they have…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
Swarming or collective motion of living entities is one of the most common and spectacular manifestations of living systems having been extensively studied in recent years. A number of general principles have been established. The…
The motility of microorganisms in liquid media is an important issue in active matter and it is not yet fully understood. Previous theoretical approaches dealing with the microscopic description of microbial movement have modeled the…
Quasimolecules, which consist of two differently excited atoms in a resonantly excited gas, are considered. The energy of dissociation and typical sizes of such molecules are calculated in the first order of quantum-mechanical perturbation…
We study analytically and numerically a model metabolic cycle composed of an arbitrary number of species of catalytically active particles. Each species converts a substrate into a product, the latter being used as the substrate by the next…
During migration cells exhibit a rich variety of seemingly random migration patterns, which makes unraveling the underlying mechanisms that control cell migration a daunting challenge. For efficient migration cells require a mechanism for…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Increasing evidence suggests that active matter exhibits instances of mixed symmetry that cannot be fully described by either polar or nematic formalism. Here, we introduce a minimal model that integrates self-propulsion into the active…
Cell-to-cell variability is inherent to numerous biological processes, including cell migration. Quantifying and characterizing the variability of migrating cells is challenging, as it requires monitoring many cells for long time windows…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
The present work revisits the reduction of the nonlinear dynamics of an electromechanical system through a quasi-steady state hypothesis, discussing the fundamental aspects of this type of approach and clarifying some confusing points found…
Many motile cells exhibit migratory behaviors, such as chemotaxis (motion up or down a chemical gradient) or chemokinesis (when speed depends on concentration), which enable them to carry out vital functions including immune response, egg…
We introduce a model for describing the dynamics of large numbers of interacting cells. The fundamental dynamical variables in the model are sub-cellular elements, which interact with each other through phenomenological intra- and…