Related papers: Microtubule organization and cell geometry
The plane of bacterial cell division must be precisely positioned. In the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, the proteins PomX and PomY form a large cluster, which is tethered to the nucleoid by the ATPase PomZ and moves in a stochastic, but…
Fundamental mechanisms governing cell size control and homeostasis are still poorly understood. The relationship between sizes at division and birth in single cells is used as a metric to categorize the basis of size homeostasis [1-3].…
The directed migration of cells toward stiffer substrate regions or durotaxis is relevant to tissue development and tumor progression. Here, we introduce a phenomenological model for single cell durotaxis that incorporates both elastic…
Building on the striking similarity between the structure of the spindle during mitosis in living cells and nematic textures in confined liquid crystals, we use a continuum model of two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal droplets, to…
Cellular rearrangements, as primary sources of tissue fluidization, facilitate topological transitions during tissue morphogenesis. We study the role of intrinsic cell properties such as cell polarity and cell-cell adhesion in shaping…
We study particle transport in a class of open channels of finite length, made of identical cells of connected open polygonal billiards with parallel boundaries. In these systems the Mean Square Displacement (MSD) grows in time faster than…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
The organization of lipids in biological membranes is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is how to control lateral lipid composition in supported membranes which are…
Internal rotation is considered to play a major role in the dynamics of some globular clusters. However, in only few cases it has been studied by quantitative application of realistic and physically justified global models. Here we present…
The observed spatio-temporal ciliary beat patterns on multiciliated epithelia are suspected to be the result of self-organizing processes on various levels. Here, we present an abstract epithelium model at the pluricellular level, which…
The orientation of cell division is a major determinant of three-dimensional plant morphogenesis. Whether and how a simple division orientation rule explains the establishment of symmetric body plans is a fundamental question. Testing such…
Cellular migration is crucial for biological processes including embryonic development, immune response, and wound healing. The myosin-clutch model is a framework that describes how cells control migration through the interactions between…
Organoids are in vitro cellular collectives from which brain-like, or gut-like, or kidney-like structures emerge. To make quantitative predictions regarding the morphology and rheology of a cellular collective in its initial stages of…
Microtubules are highly regulated dynamic elements of the cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells. One of the regulation mechanisms observed in living cells is the severing by the proteins katanin and spastin. We introduce a model for the dynamics…
Directed collective cell migration is central in morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression1,2. Although it is well-accepted that the molecular anisotropy of the micro-environment guides this migration3,4, its impact on the pattern…
Cell motility is fundamental to many biological processes, and cells exhibit a variety of migration patterns. Many motile cell types follow a universal law that connects their speed and persistency, a property that can originate from the…
Cell migration is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. During migration, a cell adapts its morphology, including the overall morphology and nucleus morphology, in response to various cues in complex microenvironments,…
Intracellular transport is vital for the proper functioning and survival of a cell. Cargo (proteins, vesicles, organelles, etc.) is transferred from its place of creation to its target locations via molecular motor assisted transport along…
The molecular machinery of life is largely created via self-organisation of individual molecules into functional assemblies. Minimal coarse-grained models, where a whole macromolecule is represented by a small number of particles, can be of…
Intracellular protein patterns regulate many vital cellular functions, such as the processing of spatiotemporal information or the control of shape deformations. To do so, pattern-forming systems can be sensitive to the cell geometry by…