Related papers: Modelling how curved active proteins and shear flo…

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…

Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…

In this paper, we derive analytical expressions for the leading-order hydrodynamic mobility of a small solid particle undergoing motion tangential to a nearby large spherical capsule whose membrane possesses resistance towards shearing and…

Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…

Mammalian cell polarization and motility are important processes involved in many physiological and pathological phenomena, such as embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. The traditional view of mammalian cell motility…

This paper deals with the adhesive interaction arising between a cell circulating in the blood flow and the vascular wall. The purpose of this work is to investigate the effect of the blood flow velocity on the cell dynamics, and in…

Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…

Membrane bending is an extensively studied problem from both modeling and experimental perspectives because of the wide implications of curvature generation in cell biology. Many of the curvature generating aspects in membranes can be…

Biochemistry and mechanics are closely coupled in cell adhesion. At sites of cell-matrix adhesion, mechanical force triggers signaling through the Rho-pathway, which leads to structural reinforcement and increased contractility in the actin…

Structure formation and constant reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton are key requirements for the function of living cells. Here we show that a minimal reconstituted system consisting of actin filaments, crosslinking molecules and…

The macroscopic properties of polymeric fluids are inherited from the material properties of the fibers embedded in the solvent. The behavior of such passive fibers in flow has been of interest in a wide range of systems, including cellular…

One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces generated by contractile polymer bundles and networks,…

The mechanical properties of a thin, planar material, perfused by an embedded flow network, can be changed locally and globally by the fluid transport and storage, resulting in small or large-scale deformation, such as out-of-plane…

The conformational dynamics of a single protein molecule in a shear flow is investigated using Brownian dynamics simulations. A structure-based coarse grained model of a protein is used. We consider two proteins, ubiquitin and integrin, and…

Cell motility in dense cell collectives is pivotal in various diseases like cancer metastasis and asthma. A central aspect in these phenomena is the heterogeneity in cell motility, but identifying the motility of individual cells is…

This work investigates the motion of neutrally-buoyant, slightly deformable straight and curved prolate capsules in unbounded simple shear flow at zero Reynolds number using direct simulations. The curved capsules serve as a model for the…

Inspired by recent experimental observation of patterning at the membrane of a living cell, we propose a generic model for the dynamics of a fluctuating interface driven by particle-like inclusions which stimulate its growth. We find that…

How the cells break symmetry and organize their edge activity to move directionally is a fun- damental question in cell biology. Physical models of cell motility commonly rely on gradients of regulatory factors and/or feedback from the…

Motivated by the reported peculiar dynamics of a red blood cell in shear flow, we develop an analytical theory for the motion of a nearly--spherical fluid particle enclosed by a visco--elastic incompressible interface in linear flows. The…

Complex tissue flows in epithelia are driven by intra- and inter-cellular processes that generate, maintain, and coordinate mechanical forces. There has been growing evidence that cell shape anisotropy, manifested as nematic order, plays an…