Related papers: Force Propagation in Active Cytoskeletal Networks
Tissues are characterized by layers of functional units such as cells and extracellular matrix (ECM). Nevertheless, how dynamics at interlayer interfaces help transmit cellular forces in tissues remains overlooked. Here, we investigate a…
Virus trafficking is fundamental for infection success and plasmid cytosolic trafficking is a key step of gene delivery. Based on the main physical properties of the cellular transport machinery such as microtubules, motor proteins, our…
Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
Optical tracking in vivo experiments reveal that diffusion of particles in biological cells is strongly enhanced in the presence of ATP and the experimental data for animal cells could previously be reproduced within a phenomenological…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
Microtubules (MTs) are important cytoskeletal structures, engaged in a number of specific cellular activities, including vesicular traffic, cell cyto-architecture and motility, cell division, and information processing within neuronal…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Experiments have found that diffusion in metabolically active cells is much faster than in dormant cells, especially for large particles. However, the mechanism of this size-dependent diffusion enhancement in living cells is still unclear.…
Collective cell migration is a key driver of embryonic development, wound healing, and some types of cancer invasion. Here we provide a physical perspective of the mechanisms underlying collective cell migration. We begin with a catalogue…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
Active matter comprised of self-propelled interacting units holds a major promise for extraction of useful work from its seemingly chaotic out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Streamlining active matter to produce work is especially important at…
The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
Directional growth caused by gravitropism and corresponding bending of plant cells has been explored since 19th century, however, many aspects of mechanisms underlying the perception of gravity at the molecular level are still not well…
Membranes regulate transport in a wide variety of industrial and biological applications. The microscale geometry of the membrane can significantly affect overall transport through the membrane, but the precise nature of this multiscale…
In this letter, we show that pore-scale diffusiophoresis of colloidal particles along local salt gradients manifests in the macroscopic dispersion of particles in a porous medium. Despite is transient character, this microscopic phenomenon…