Related papers: Physical limits on galvanotaxis
Galvanotaxis is believed to be driven by the redistribution of transmembrane proteins and other molecules, referred to as "sensors", through electrophoresis and electroosmosis. Here, we update our previous model of the limits of…
During wound healing, fish keratocyte cells undergo galvanotaxis where they follow a wound-induced electric field. In addition to their stereotypical persistent motion, keratocytes can develop circular motion without a field or oscillate…
Many eukaryotic cells are able to perform directional mechanosensing by directly measuring minute spatial differences in the mechanical stress on their membranes. Here, we explore the limits of a single mechanosensitive channel activation…
In contexts ranging from embryonic development to bacterial ecology, cell populations migrate chemotactically along self-generated chemical gradients, often forming a propagating front. Here, we theoretically show that the stability of such…
The combination of protrusions and retractions in the movement of polarized cells leads to understand the effect of possible synchronisation between the two ends of the cells. This synchronisation, in turn, could lead to different dynamics…
The skin forms an efficient barrier against the environment, and rapid cutaneous wound healing after injury is therefore essential. Healing of the uppermost layer of the skin, the epidermis, involves collective migration of keratinocytes,…
Metastasis is a process of cell migration that can be collective and guided by chemical cues. Viewing metastasis in this way, as a physical phenomenon, allows one to draw upon insights from other studies of collective sensing and migration…
Neuronal growth cones are the most sensitive amongst eukaryotic cells in responding to directional chemical cues. Although a dynamic microtubule cytoskeleton has been shown to be essential for growth cone turning, the precise nature of…
Eukaryotic cells possess a sensible chemical compass allowing them to orient toward sources of soluble chemicals. The extracellular chemical signal triggers separation of the cell membrane into two domains populated by different…
Cell polarity and movement are fundamental to many biological functions. Experimental and theoretically studies have indicated that interactions of certain proteins lead to the cell polarization which plays a key role in controlling the…
Eukaryotic cells perform chemotaxis by determining the direction of chemical gradients based on stochastic sensing of concentrations at the cell surface. To examine the efficiency of this process, previous studies have investigated the…
Voltage and charge distributions in cellular microdomains regulate communications, excitability, and signal transduction. We report here new electrical laws in a cell, which follow from a nonlinear electro-diffusion model. These newly…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
During cell migration, cells become polarized, change their shape, and move in response to various internal and external cues. Cell polarization is defined through the spatio-temporal organization of molecules such as PI3K or small GTPases,…
Organisms use specialized sensors to measure their environments, but the fundamental principles that determine their accuracy remain largely unknown. In Escherichia coli chemotaxis, we previously found that gradient-climbing speed is…
Collective cell migration in response to a chemical cue occurs in many biological processes such as morphogenesis and cancer metastasis. Clusters of migratory cells in these systems are capable of responding to gradients of less than 1%…
The ability of eukaryotic cells to squeeze through constrictions is limited by the stiffness of their large and rigid nucleus. However, migrating cells are often able to overcome this limitation and pass through constrictions much smaller…
In biological cells and novel diagnostic devices biochemical receptors need to be sensitive to extremely small concentration changes of signaling molecules. The accuracy of such molecular signaling is ultimately limited by the counting…
Cell migration plays essential roles in development, wound healing, diseases, and in the maintenance of a complex body. Experiments in collective cell migration generally measure quantities such as cell displacement and velocity. The…
Recent experimental studies indicate that visual cognition is accompanied by slowly propagating biophysical travelling waves in cortical tissue. Here we propose polarization waves as a coherent physical framework for visual cognition. We…