Related papers: Interplay between substrate rigidity and tissue fl…
The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…
Liquid wetting of a surface is omnipresent in nature and the advance of micro-fabrication and assembly techniques in recent years offers increasing ability to control this phenomenon. Here, we identify how surface roughness influences the…
We investigate the rapid spreading dynamics of a viscoelastic drop on a solid. Upon contact, surface tension drives a fast motion of the contact line along the substrate. Here, we resolve this motion for viscoelastic liquids by experiments…
During the spreading of epithelial tissues, the advancing tissue front often develops fingerlike protrusions. Their resemblance to traditional viscous fingering patterns in driven fluids suggests that epithelial fingers could arise from an…
Various multicellular tissues show chiral morphology. Experimental studies have shown this can originate from cell chirality. However, no theory has been proposed to connect the cellular chiral torque and multicellular chiral morphogenesis.…
In this work we approach cell migration under a large-scale assumption, so that the system reduces to a particle in motion. Unlike classical particle models, the cell displacement results from its internal activity: the cell velocity is a…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
Cell-based, mathematical modeling of collective cell behavior has become a prominent tool in developmental biology. Cell-based models represent individual cells as single particles or as sets of interconnected particles, and predict the…
Growing monolayers of rod-shaped bacteria exhibit local alignment similar to extensile active nematics. When confined in a channel or growing inward from a ring, the local nematic order of these monolayers changes to a global ordering with…
The spreading of bacterial colonies at solid-air interfaces is determined by the physico-chemical properties of the involved interfaces. The production of surfactant molecules by bacteria is a widespread strategy that allows the colony to…
Crowded environments modify the diffusion of macromolecules, generally slowing their movement and inducing transient anomalous subdiffusion. The presence of obstacles also modifies the kinetics and equilibrium behavior of tracers. While…
In biological systems, the growth of cells, tissues, and organs is influenced by mechanical cues. Locally, cell growth leads to a mechanically heterogeneous environment as cells pull and push their neighbors in a cell network. Despite this…
It is increasingly being realized that liquid-crystalline features can play an important role in the properties and dynamics of cell monolayers. Here, we present a cell-based model of cell layers, based on the phase-field formulation, that…
Cell spreading requires a major reorganisation of the actin cytoskeleton, from a cortical structure to a lamellipodium where filaments are mostly parallel to the substrate. We propose a model inspired by the physics of nematic liquid…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
During neurodevelopment, neuronal axons navigate through the extracellular environment, guided by various cues to establish connections with distant target cells. Among other factors, axon trajectories are influenced by heterogeneities in…
It is known that mechanical interactions couple a cell to its neighbors, enabling a feedback loop to regulate tissue growth. However, the interplay between cell-cell adhesion strength, local cell density and force fluctuations in regulating…
Motivated by the motion of nematode sperm cells, we present a model for the motion of an adhesive gel on a solid substrate. The gel polymerizes at the leading edge and depolymerizes at the rear. The motion results from a competition between…
Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…
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…