Related papers: Long-Range Repulsion Between Chromosomes in Mammal…
Microtubules are an essential physical building block of cellular systems. They are organized using specific crosslinkers, motors, and influencers of nucleation and growth. With the addition of anti-parallel crosslinkers, microtubule…
The formation of microparticles requires the bending of the plasma membrane away from the cytosol. The capcity of the cell membrane to form a microparticle, and the rate of membrane deformation, are controlled by multiple factors, including…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…
Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
In growing plant cells, parallel ordering of microtubules (MTs) along the inner surface of the cell membrane influences the direction of cell expansion and thereby plant morphology. For correct expansion of organs that primarily grow by…
During embryonic development, regeneration and homeostasis, cells have to physically integrate into their target tissues, where they ultimately execute their function. Despite a significant body of research on how mechanical forces instruct…
Broken-symmetry-induced order parameters account for many phenomena in condensed matter physics. For spin glasses, such a framework dictates its theoretical construction, whereas experiments have only established dynamical behaviors such as…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
Using a multi-phase field model, we examine how particle deformability, which is a proxy for cell stiffness, affects motility induced phase separation (MIPS). We show that purely repulsive deformable, i.e., squishy, cells phase separate…
During the early developmental process of organisms, the formation of the left-right laterality requires a subtle mechanism, as it is associated with other principal body axes. Any inherent chiral feature in an egg cell can in principal…
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…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
The mechanism and driving forces of chromosome segregation in the bacterial cell cycle of E. coli is one of the least understood events in its life cycle. Using principles of entropic repulsion between polymer loops confined in a cylinder,…
Left-right axis specification establishes embryonic laterality through asymmetric signaling cascades originating at the cellular scale. We previously reported the presence of a directionality bias in confined pairs of endothelial (and…
Recent experiments have been able to visualise chromosome organization in fast-growing E.coli cells. However, the mechanism underlying the spatio-temporal organization remains poorly understood. We propose that the DNA adopts a specific…
The ability of cells to reorganize in response to external stimuli is important in areas ranging from morphogenesis to tissue engineering. Elongated cells can co-align due to steric effects, forming states with local order. We show that…
During cell division, the mitotic spindle moves dynamically through the cell to position the chromosomes and determine the ultimate spatial position of the two daughter cells. These movements have been attributed to the action of cortical…