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Exocytosis is a common transport mechanism via which cells transport out non-essential macro-molecules (cargo) into the extra cellular space. ESCRT-III proteins are known to help in this. They polymerize into a conical spring like structure…
Synthetic molecular motors are an appealing means to control motion at the nanoscale, but understanding their behaviour as single-molecule actuators and integrating them into larger, functional systems remain technical challenges.…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
Endocytosis is a key cellular process involved in the uptake of nutrients, pathogens or the diagnosis and therapy of diseases. Most studies have focused on spherical objects, whereas biologically relevant shapes can be highly anisotropic.…
Rotational migration is one specific form of collective cell migration when epithelial cells are confined in a spherical geometry, such as in the epithelial acini. This tissue-level rotation motion is crucial for the morphogenesis of…
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…
Tracking the dynamics of fluorescent nanoparticles during embryonic development allows insights into the physical state of the embryo and, potentially, molecular processes governing developmental mechanisms. In this work, we investigate the…
We develop a model of amoeboid cell motility based on active gel theory. Modeling the motile apparatus of a eukaryotic cell as a confined layer of finite length of poroelastic active gel permeated by a solvent, we first show that, due to…
Chirality is a recurrent theme in the study of biological systems, in which active processes are driven by the internal conversion of chemical energy into work. Bacterial flagella, acto-myosin filaments and microtubule bundles are active…
A model to describe the arising of new structures in an initial homogeneous biological system is proposed. The essay is motivated by the intention to work on a non-equilibrium situation grouping together several mechanisms and processes as:…
We study the dynamics of a model of membrane vesicle transport into dendritic spines, which are bulbous intracellular compartments in neurons driven by molecular motors. We reduce the lubrication model proposed in [Fai et al., Active…
During development, embryos perform a mesmerizing choreography, which is crucial for the correct shaping, positioning and function of all organs. The cellular properties powering animal morphogenesis have been the focus of much attention.…
Amoeboid cell motility is relevant in a wide variety of biomedical applications such as wound healing, cancer metastasis, and embryonic morphogenesis. It is characterized by pronounced changes of the cell shape associated with expansions…
We present a systematic study of the influence of cell geometry on the orientational distribution of microtubules (MTs) nucleated from a single microtubule organizing center (MTOC). For simplicity we consider an elliptical cell geometry, a…
Cilia and flagella are actively bending slender organelles, performing functions such as motility, feeding and embryonic symmetry breaking. We review the mechanics of viscous-dominated microscale flow, including time-reversal symmetry, drag…
Collective cell migration is crucial in many biological processes such as wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and tumor progression. The leading front of a collective migrating epithelial cell layer often destabilizes into multicellular…
In dense systems of hard-interacting colloidal particles having anisotropic shapes, crystallization pathways represent an interesting frontier. The translational and rotational dynamics of such particles become coupled at higher densities,…
We develop an agent-based model of vasculogenesis, the de novo formation of blood vessels. Endothelial cells in the vessel network are viewed as linearly elastic spheres and are of two types: vessel elements are contained within the…
Many cell membrane proteins that bind to actin form dynamic clusters driven by contractile flows generated by the actomyosin machinery at the cell cortex. Recent evidence suggests that a necessary condition for the generation of these…
We perform an analytical investigation of the cell interface dynamics in the framework of a minimal phase field model of cell motility suggested in [1], which consists of two coupled evolution equations for the order parameter and a…