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A mathematical model is proposed for shape evolution and locomotion of fish epidermal keratocytes on elastic substrates. The model is based on mechanosensing concepts: cells apply contractile forces onto the elastic substrate, while cell…
A two-dimensional mathematical model for cells migrating without adhesion capabilities is presented and analyzed. Cells are represented by their cortex, which is modelled as an elastic curve, subject to an internal pressure force. Net…
Collective cell migration is a highly regulated process involved in wound healing, cancer metastasis and morphogenesis. Mechanical interactions among cells provide an important regulatory mechanism to coordinate such collective motion.…
The motility of a cell can be triggered or inhibited not only by an applied force but also by a mechanically neutral force couple. This type of loading, represented by an applied stress and commonly interpreted as either squeezing or…
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…
Recent experiments have shown that when a near-hemispherical lipid vesicle attached to a solid surface is subjected to a simple shear flow it exhibits a pattern of membrane circulation much like a dipole vortex. This is in marked contrast…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
Although understanding the collective migration of cells, such as that seen in epithelial sheets, is essential for understanding diseases such as metastatic cancer, this motion is not yet as well characterized as individual cell migration.…
The actin cortex of an animal cell is a thin polymeric layer attached to the inner side of the plasma membrane. It plays a key role in shape regulation and pattern formation on the cellular and tissue scale and, in particular, generates the…
In multicellular systems, adhesion complexes, such as those composed of E-cadherin and associated catenins, mechanically couple neighboring cells by directly linking their actin-based cytoskeletal assemblies. However, the mechanics of how…
A motile cell, when stimulated, shows a dramatic increase in the activity of its membrane, manifested by the appearance of dynamic membrane structures such as lamellipodia, filopodia and membrane ruffles. The external stimulus turns on…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
The steady-state behavior of a dilute suspension of self-propelled filaments confined between planar walls subjected to the Couette-flow is reported herein. The effect of hydrodynamics has been taken into account using a mesoscale…
Actin networks, acting as an engine pushing against an external load, are fundamentally important to cell motility. A measure of the effectiveness of an engine is the velocity the engine is able to produce at a given force, the…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Cell crawling on flat substrates is based on intracellular flows of the actin cytoskeleton that are driven by both actin polymerization at the front and myosin contractility at the back. The new experimental tool of optogenetics makes it…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
Intracellular pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes and Rickettsia rickettsii move within a host cell by polymerizing a comet-tail of actin fibers that ultimately pushes the cell forward. This dense network of cross-linked actin polymers…
While cell crawling on a solid surface is relatively well understood, and relies on substrate adhesion, some cells can also swim in the bulk, through mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Here, we propose a minimal model for in-bulk…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…