Related papers: Cell shape and orientation control galvanotactic a…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
We study how simple eukaryotic organisms make decisions in response to competing stimuli in the context of phototaxis by the unicellular alga $Chlamydomonas~reinhardtii$. While negatively phototactic cells swim directly away from a…
Cell migration plays essential roles in development, wound healing, diseases, and in the maintenance of a complex body. Experiments in collective cell migration generally measure quantities such as cell displacement and velocity. The…
A qualitative model is presented, suggesting gravitational information is transduced into biological systems primarily by its effect on spatially organised membrane and cytoplasmic flows. Continuous low affinity interactions between…
Cells have the ability to detect electric fields and respond to them with directed migratory movement. Investigations identified genes and proteins that play important roles in defining the migration efficiency. Nevertheless, the sensing…
The effects of cell size and deformability on the lateral migration and deformation of living cells flowing through a rectangular microchannel has been numerically investigated and compared with the inertial-microfluidics data on detection…
The combination of protrusions and retractions in the movement of polarized cells leads to understand the effect of possible synchronisation between the two ends of the cells. This synchronisation, in turn, could lead to different dynamics…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…
In embryonic development, programmed cell shape changes are essential for building functional organs, but in many cases the mechanisms that precisely regulate these changes remain unknown. We propose that fluid-like drag forces generated by…
Cells can sense and respond to mechanical signals over relatively long distances across fibrous extracellular matrices. Here, we explore all of the key factors that influence long range force transmission in cell-populated collagen…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Cells frequently employ extracellular vesicles, or exosomes, to signal across long distances and coordinate collective actions. Exosomes diffuse slowly, can be actively degraded, and contain stochastic amounts of molecular cargo. These…
Cell migration in vivo is often guided by chemical signals. Such chemotaxis, such as performed by immune cells migrating to a wound site, is complicated by the complex geometry inside living tissues. In this study, we extend our theoretical…
We develop a simple computational model for cell boundary evolution in plastic deformation. We study the cell boundary size distribution and cell boundary misorientation distribution that experimentally have been found to have scaling forms…
We present a systematic study of the influence of cell geometry on the orientational distribution of microtubules (MTs) nucleated from a single microtubule organizing center (MTOC). For simplicity we consider an elliptical cell geometry, a…
Because molecules can have their orientation locked when embedded into a solid rare-gas matrix, their hyperfine structure is strongly perturbed relative to the freely rotating molecule. The addition of an electric field further perturbs the…
Cells move differently on substrates with different elasticities. In particular, the persistence time of their motion is higher on stiffer substrates. We show that this behavior will result in a net transport of cells directed up a…
Left-right axis specification establishes embryonic laterality through asymmetric signaling cascades originating at the cellular scale. We previously reported the presence of a directionality bias in confined pairs of endothelial (and…
In biological tissues, it is now well-understood that mechanical cues are a powerful mechanism for pattern regulation. While much work has focused on interactions between cells and external substrates, recent experiments suggest that cell…
Chemotaxis combines three processes: directional sensing, polarity reorientation and migration. Directed migration plays an important role in immune response, metastasis, wound healing and development. To describe chemotaxis, we extend a…