Related papers: Interplay between substrate rigidity and tissue fl…
Many types of motile cells perform durotaxis, namely, directed migration following gradients of substrate stiffness. Recent experiments have revealed that cell monolayers can migrate toward stiffer regions even when individual cells do not…
Living tissues undergo wetting transitions: On a surface, they can either form a droplet-like cell aggregate or spread as a monolayer of migrating cells. Tissue wetting depends not only on the chemical but also on the mechanical properties…
The importance of collective cellular migration during embryogenesis and tissue repair asks for a sound understanding of underlying principles and mechanisms. Here, we address recent in vitro experiments on cell monolayers which show that…
Collective cell migration contributes to embryogenesis, wound healing and tumor metastasis. Cell monolayer migration experiments help understanding what determines the movement of cells far from the leading edge. Inhibiting cell…
Epithelial cell monolayers expand on substrates by forming finger-like protrusions, created by leader cells, in the monolayer boundary. Information transmission and communication between individual entities in the cohesive collective lead…
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…
The evolutionary success of bacteria lies in their ability to form complex surface-associated communities in diverse biophysical settings. However, it remains poorly understood how compliance of soft surfaces, measured in terms of their…
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…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
In vivo and in vitro cells rely on the support of an underlying biocompatible substrate, such as the extracellular matrix or a culture substrate, to spread and proliferate. The mechanical and chemical properties of such structures play a…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
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…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
Confluent cell monolayers and epithelia tissues show remarkable patterns and correlations in structural arrangements and actively-driven collective flows. We simulate these properties using multiphase field models. The models are based on…
Collective behaviors in cellular systems are regulated not only by biochemical signalling pathways but also by intercellular mechanical forces, whose quantification in contractile monolayers remains poorly understood. Here, by integrating…
Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…