Related papers: Spontaneous and Induced Oscillations in Confined E…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
Collective oscillation of cells in a population has been reported under diverse biological contexts and with vastly different molecular constructs. Could there be common principles similar to those that govern spontaneous oscillation in…
Mechanical oscillations are important for many cellular processes, e.g. the beating of cilia and flagella or the sensation of sound by hair cells. These dynamic states originate from spontaneous oscillations of molecular motors. A…
Oscillations represent a ubiquitous phenomenon in biological systems. The conventional models of biological periodic oscillations are usually proposed as interconnecting transcriptional feedback loops. Some specific proteins function as…
We investigate a driven, one-dimensional system of colloidal particles in a periodically currogated narrow channel subject to a time-delayed feedback control. Our goal is to identify conditions under which the control induces oscillatory,…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
We study wave propagation in networks of coupled cells which can behave as excitable or self-oscillatory media. For excitable media, an asymptotic construction of wave trains is presented. This construction predicts their shape and speed,…
Cells within living soft biological tissues seem to promote the maintenance of a mechanical state within a defined range near a so-called set-point. This mechanobiological process is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. During this…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
The spontaneous generation of electrical activity underpins a number of essential physiological processes, and is observed even in tissues where specialized pacemaker cells have not been identified. The emergence of periodic oscillations in…
Single and collective cellular oscillations involving the actomyosin cytoskeleton have been observed in numerous biological systems. We show here that a generic model of a contractile material, which is turning over and contracts against an…
Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…
The growth of a tissue, which depends on cell-cell interactions and biologically relevant process such as cell division and apoptosis, is regulated by a mechanical feedback mechanism. We account for these effects in a minimal…
Animal morphogenesis often involves significant shape changes of epithelial tissue sheets. Great progress has been made in understanding the underlying cellular driving forces and their coordination through biomechanical feedback loops.…
We propose a novel mechanism leading to spatiotemporal oscillations in extended systems that does not rely on local bulk instabilities. Instead, oscillations arise from the interaction of two subsystems of different spatial dimensionality.…
We propose a simple mathematical model to describe the mechanical relaxation of cells within a curved epithelial tissue layer represented by an arbitrary curve in two-dimensional space. This model generalises previous one-dimensional models…
Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…
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…
Convergence extension, the simultaneous elongation of tissue along one axis while narrowing along a perpendicular axis, occurs during embryonic development. A fundamental process that contributes to shaping the organism, it happens in many…
Active phenomena which involve force generation and motion play a key role in a number of phenomena in living cells such as cell motility, muscle contraction and the active transport of material and organelles. Here we discuss mechanical…