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We consider PDE/ODE systems for the simulation of intercellular signaling in multicellular environments. The intracellular processes for each cell described here by ODEs determine the long-time dynamics, but the PDE part dominates the…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
The friction and adhesion between elastic bodies are strongly influenced by the roughness of the surfaces in contact. Here we develop a multiscale molecular dynamics approach to contact mechanics, which can be used also when the surfaces…
Multicellular systems play a key role in bioprocess and biomedical engineering. Cell ensembles encountered in these setups show phenotypic variability like size and biochemical composition. As this variability may result in undesired…
Although random cell complexes occur throughout the physical sciences, there does not appear to be a standard way to quantify their statistical similarities and differences. The various proposals in the literature are usually motivated by…
Cell adhesion complexes (CACs), which are activated by ligand binding, play key roles in many cellular functions ranging from cell cycle regulation to mediation of cell extracellular matrix adhesion. Inspired by single molecule pulling…
We consider a partial differential equation model for the growth of heterogeneous cell populations subdivided into multiple distinct discrete phenotypes. In this model, cells preferentially move towards regions where they feel less…
Understanding mechanosensitivity, i.e. how cells sense the stiffness of their environment is very important, yet there is a fundamental difficulty in understanding its mechanism: to measure an elastic modulus one requires two points of…
Mechanobiology is gaining more and more traction as the fundamental role of physical forces in biological function becomes clearer. Forces at the microscale are often measured indirectly using inverse problems such as Traction Force…
It is known that mechanical interactions couple a cell to its neighbors, enabling a feedback loop to regulate tissue growth. However, the interplay between cell-cell adhesion strength, local cell density and force fluctuations in regulating…
Experimental studies of cell motility in culture have shown that under adequate conditions these living organisms possess the ability to organize themselves into complex structures. Such structures may exhibit a synergy that greatly…
Cells of the human body have nearly identical genome but exhibit very different phenotypes that allow them to carry out specific functions and react to changes in their surrounding environment. This division of labour is achieved by…
Cells sense the geometry and stiffness of their adhesive environment by active contractility. For strong adhesion to flat substrates, two-dimensional contractile network models can be used to understand how force is distributed throughout…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
A hallmark of biological tissues, viewed as complex cellular materials, is the active generation of mechanical stresses by cellular processes, such as cell divisions. Each cellular event generates a force dipole that deforms the surrounding…
The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…
Cellular cortex, which is a highly viscous thin cytoplasmic layer just below the cell membrane, controls the cell's mechanical properties, which can be characterized by a hydrodynamic length scale $\ell$. Cells actively regulate $\ell$ via…
The large body of experimental data on nuclear fission is analyzed with a semi-empirical ordering scheme based on the macro-microscopic approach and the separability of compound-nucleus and fragment properties on the fission path. We apply…
The constant interplay and information exchange between cells and their micro-environment are essential to their survival and ability to execute biological functions. To date, a few leading technologies such as traction force microscopy,…