Related papers: Mechanosensitive bonds induced complex cell motili…
Movement within eukaryotic cells largely originates from localized forces exerted by myosin motors on scaffolds of actin filaments. Although individual motors locally exert both contractile and extensile forces, large actomyosin structures…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
During animal development and homeostasis, the structure of tissues, including muscles, blood vessels and connective tissues adapts to mechanical strains in the extracellular matrix (ECM). These strains originate from the differential…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
Cell motility and tissue morphogenesis depend crucially on the dynamic remodelling of actomyosin networks. An actomyosin network consists of an actin polymer network connected by crosslinker proteins and motor protein myosins that generate…
Mechanical forces acting on cell adhesion receptor proteins regulate a range of cellular functions by formation and rupture of non-covalent interactions with ligands. Typically, force decreases the lifetimes of intact complexes…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
We present a generic model of cell motility generated by acto-myosin contraction of the cell cortex. We identify analytically dynamical instabilities of the cortex and show that they trigger spontaneous cortical flows which in turn can…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells generates forces in conjunction with myosin motor proteins to directly and indirectly drive essential cellular processes. The semiflexible filaments of the cytoskeleton can respond nonlinearly to the…
Understanding the rolling and adhesion behavior of a cell on the vascular surface under viscous shear flow is important to better understand many biological processes. One of the important examples is the adhesion of the leukocytes onto…
The large-scale collective behavior of biological systems can be characterized by macroscopic transport, which arises from the non-equilibrium microscopic interactions among individual constituents. A prominent example is the formation of…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Cell migration is a fundamental process involved in physiological phenomena such as the immune response and morphogenesis, but also in pathological processes, such as the development of tumor metastasis. These functions are effectively…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
Cell shape changes are largely controlled by the actin cytoskeleton, a dynamic filament network beneath the plasma membrane. Several cell types can form extended free-standing protrusions not supported by an extracellular substrate or…
We explore a generic mechanism whereby a droplet of active matter acquires motility by the spontaneous breakdown of a discrete symmetry. The model we study offers a simple representation of a "cell extract" comprising, e.g., a droplet of…
Cell migration in morphogenesis and cancer metastasis typically involves interplay between different cell types. We construct and study a minimal, one-dimensional model comprised of two different motile cells with each cell represented as…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…