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In this thesis we develop minimal models of the relationship between motility, growth, and evolution of cancer cells. We utilise simple simulations of a population of individual cells in space to examine how changes in mechanical properties…
Imaging dynamics of cellular morphogenesis with high spatial-temporal resolution in 3D is challenging, due to the low spatial resolution along the optical axis and photo-toxicity. However, some cellular structures are planar and hence 2D…
Collective migration of eukaryotic cells is often guided by chemotaxis, and is critical in several biological processes, such as cancer metastasis, wound healing, and embryogenesis. Understanding collective chemotaxis has challenged…
Cells are dynamic systems characterized by temporal variations in biophysical properties such as stiffness and contractility. Recent studies show that the recruitment and release of actin filaments into and out of the cell cortex - a…
Controlling the collective motion of epithelial cell populations is fundamental for understanding multicellular self-organization and for advancing tissue engineering. Under spatial confinement, cells are known to exhibit either vortex…
The small GTPases Rac and Rho are known to regulate eukaryotic cell shape, promoting front protrusion (Rac) or rear retraction (Rho) of the cell edge. Such cell deformation changes the contact and adhesion of cell to the extracellular…
During developmental processes such as embryogenesis, how a group of cells fold into specific structures, is a central question in biology that defines how living organisms form. Establishing tissue-level morphology critically relies on how…
During metastatic dissemination, streams of cells collectively migrate through a network of narrow channels within the extracellular matrix, before entering into the blood stream. This strategy is believed to outperform other migration…
In the Drosophila melanogaster egg chamber, the collective migration of border cells toward the oocyte is guided by spatial gradients of chemoattractants. While cellular responses to these cues are well characterized, the spatial…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
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…
Cell monolayers and epithelial tissues display slow dynamics during the liquid-glass transitions, a phenomenon with direct relevance to embryogenesis, tumor metastases, and wound healing. In active cells, persistent motion and cell…
We derive an asymptotically consistent morphoelastic shell model to describe the finite deformations of biological tissues using the variational asymptotical method. Biological materials may exhibit remarkable compressibility when under…
Cell motility in dense cell collectives is pivotal in various diseases like cancer metastasis and asthma. A central aspect in these phenomena is the heterogeneity in cell motility, but identifying the motility of individual cells is…
The technique presented here identifies tethered mould designs, optimised for growing cultured tissue with very highly-aligned cells. It is based on a microscopic biophysical model for polarised cellular hydrogels. There is an unmet need…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
Morphogenetic dynamics of tissue sheets require coordinated cell shape changes regulated by global patterning of mechanical forces. Inspired by such biological phenomena, we propose a minimal mechanochemical model based on the notion that…
Cell membranes are studded with protrusions that were thoroughly analyzed with electron microscopy. However, the nanometer-scale three-dimensional motions generated by cell membranes to fit the topography of foreign surfaces and initiate…
Cancer cell migration between different body parts is the driving force behind cancer metastasis, which is the main cause of mortality of patients. Migration of cancer cells often proceeds by penetration through narrow cavities in locally…
Bacteria living on surfaces use different types of motility mechanisms to move on the surface in search of food or to form micro-colonies. Twitching is one such form of motility employed by bacteria such as N. gonorrhoeae, in which the…