Related papers: Contractility-driven cell motility against a visco…
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…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
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…
The intracellular environment is a dynamic space filled with various organelles moving in all directions. Included in this diverse group of organelles are vesicles, which are involved in transport of molecular cargo throughout the cell.…
We propose and study a model of hypothetical magnetosensitive ionic channels which are long thought to be a possible candidate to explain the influence of weak magnetic fields on living organisms ranging from magnetotactic bacteria to…
We report experiments on the deformation and transport of an elastic fiber in a viscous cellular flow, namely a lattice of counter-rotative vortices. We show that the fiber can buckle when approaching a stagnation point. By tuning either…
Coherent oscillatory activity can arise spontaneously as a result of increased coupling in a system of excitable and passive cells, each being quiescent in isolation. This can potentially explain the appearance of spontaneous rhythmic…
Cells exert traction forces on compliant substrates and can induce surface instabilities that appear as characteristic wrinkling patterns. Here, we develop a mechanical description of cell-induced wrinkling on soft substrates using a thin…
Understanding how bacteria move in porous media is critical to applications in healthcare, agriculture, environmental remediation, and chemical sensing. Recent work has demonstrated that E. coli, which moves by run-and-tumble dynamics in a…
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
The crawling motion of Dictyostelium discoideum on substrata involves a number of coordinated events including cell contractions and cell protrusions. The mechanical forces exerted on the substratum during these contractions have recently…
Bacterial migration through confined spaces is critical for several phenomena like: biofilm formation, bacterial transport in soils, and bacterial therapy against cancer . In the present work, \textit{E. coli} (strain K12-MG1655 WT)…
We explore a generic mechanism whereby a droplet of active matter acquires motility by the spontaneous breakdown of a discrete symmetry. The model we study offers a simple representation of a "cell extract" comprising, e.g., a droplet of…
Channel proteins, that selectively conduct molecules across cell membranes, often exhibit an asymmetric structure. By means of a stochastic model, we argue that channel asymmetry in the presence of non-equilibrium fluctuations, fueled by…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
Bistability is a major mechanism for cellular decision making and usually results from positive feedback in biochemical control systems. Here we show theoretically that bistability between unbound and bound states of adhesion clusters…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
Animal cells form contractile structures to promote various functions, from cell motility to cell division. Force generation in these structures is often due to molecular motors such as myosin that require polar substrates for their…
Adhering cells actively probe the mechanical properties of their environment and use the resulting information to position and orient themselves. We show that a large body of experimental observations can be consistently explained from one…
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…