Related papers: Force Propagation in Active Cytoskeletal Networks
Cell migration is a fundamental process for life and is highly dependent on the dynamical and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton. Intensive physical and biochemical crosstalk between actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments…
In the cellular phenomena of cytoplasmic streaming, molecular motors carrying cargo along a network of microtubules entrain the surrounding fluid. The piconewton forces produced by individual motors are sufficient to deform long…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…
Coordinated and cooperative motion of cells is essential for embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer invasion. A predictive understanding of the emergent mechanical behaviors in collective cell motion is…
The kinesin superfamily of motor proteins is a major driver of anterograde transport of vesicles and organelles within eukaryotic cells via microtubules. Numerous studies have elucidated the step-size, velocities, forces, and navigation…
Microtubules are key structural elements of living cells that are crucial for cell division, intracellular transport and motility. Recent experiments have shown that microtubule severing proteins and molecular motors stimulate the direct…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
The eukaryotic cell's cytoskeleton is a prototypical example of an active material: objects embedded within it are driven by molecular motors acting on the cytoskeleton, leading to anomalous diffusive behavior. Experiments tracking the…
Cell spreading is investigated at various scales in order to understand motility of living cells which is essential for a range of physiological activities in higher organisms as well as in microbes. At a microscopic scale, it has been seen…
Microtubules are protein polymers that form "molecular highways" for long-range transport within living cells. Molecular motors actively step along microtubules to shuttle cellular materials between the nucleus and the cell periphery; this…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
Mixtures of active and passive particles are ubiquitous at the microscale. Many essential microbial processes involve interactions with dead or immotile cells or passive crowders. When passive objects are immersed in active baths, their…
Connecting the large-scale emergent behaviors of active materials to the microscopic properties of their constituents is a challenge due to a lack of data on the multiscale dynamics and structure of such systems. We approach this problem by…
How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…
Experimental studies of systems containing active proteins that undergo conformational changes driven by catalytic chemical reactions have shown that the diffusion coefficients of passive tracer particles and active molecules are larger…
A microtubule (MT) is a hollow tube of approximately 25 nm diameter. The two ends of the tube are dissimilar and are designated as `plus' and `minus' ends. Motivated by the collective push and pull exerted by a bundle of MTs during…
The microtubule cytoskeleton is responsible for sustained, long-range intracellular transport of mRNAs, proteins, and organelles in neurons. Neuronal microtubules must be stable enough to ensure reliable transport, but they also undergo…
We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…