Related papers: Inferring nonlinear dynamics of cell migration
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…
In this work we approach cell migration under a large-scale assumption, so that the system reduces to a particle in motion. Unlike classical particle models, the cell displacement results from its internal activity: the cell velocity is a…
Bacteria typically reside in heterogeneous environments with various chemogradients where motile cells can gain an advantage over non-motile cells. Since motility is energetically costly, cells must optimize their swimming speed and…
We study a minimal model of a crawling eukaryotic cell with a chemical polarity controlled by a reaction-diffusion mechanism describing Rho GTPase dynamics. The size, shape, and speed of the cell emerge from the combination of the chemical…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
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…
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…
Biological cells embedded in fibrous matrices have been observed to form inter-cellular bands of dense and aligned fibers, through which they mechanically interact over long distances. Such matrix-mediated cellular interactions have been…
Collective cell migration is essential for a wide range of biological processes such as: morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer spreading. However, it is well known that migrating epithelial collectives frequently undergo jamming, stay…
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…
Mechanical cues from the extracellular microenvironment play a central role in regulating the structure, function and fate of living cells. Nevertheless, the precise nature of the mechanisms and processes underlying this crucial cellular…
Flagellated bacteria are hydrodynamically attracted to rigid walls, yet past work shows a 'hovering' state where they swim stably at a finite height above surfaces. We use numerics and theory to reveal the physical origin of hovering.…
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…
This paper concerns a model for tumor cell migration through the surrounding extracellular matrix by considering mass balance phenomena involving the chemical interactions produced on the cell surface. The well-posedness of this model is…
Cell crawling is critical to biological development, homeostasis and disease. In many cases, cell trajectories are quasi-random-walk. In vitro assays on flat surfaces often described such quasi-random-walk cell trajectories as…
Discrete numerical simulations are performed to study the evolution of the micro-structure and the response of a granular packing during successive loading-unloading cycles, consisting of quasi-static rotations in the gravity field between…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Eukaryotic cells demonstrate a wide variety of dynamic patterns of filamentous actin (F-actin) and its regulators. Some of these patterns play important roles in cell functions, such as distinct motility modes, which motivate this study. We…
Coordinated rotational motion is an intriguing, yet still elusive mode of collective cell migration, which is relevant in pathological and morphogenetic processes. Most of the studies on this topic have been carried out on confined…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…