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Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
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…
Here, we report on a new class active particles capable of dynamically programmable motion powered by electricity. We have implemented physical principles that separate the propulsion and steering mechanisms of active motion using optically…
The actin cytoskeleton of cells is in continuous motion due to both polymerization of new filaments and their contraction by myosin II molecular motors. Through adhesion to the substrate, such intracellular flow can be converted into cell…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
This fluid dynamics video showcases how optically induced electrokinetic forces can be used to drive three-dimensional micro-vortices. The strong microfluidic vortices are used constructively in conjunction with other electrokinetic forces…
Cells are fundamental building blocks of living organisms displaying an array of shapes, morphologies, and textures that encode specific functions and physical behaviors. Elucidating the rules of this code remains a challenge. In this work,…
Capturing the emergence of deformation waves in contractile living tissues is a challenge that has recently been tackled with models of actively deformable particles. Inspired by the anisotropic deformation of cardiomyocytes in cardiac…
Cell assemblies manipulation by optogenetics is pivotal to advance neuroscience and neuroengineering. In in vivo applications, photostimulation often broadly addresses a population of cells simultaneously, leading to feed-forward and to…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Epithelial morphogenesis, a signature problem of tissue biology and tissue mechanics, continues to inspire biologists and physicists alike. Many treatments focus on tissue fluidization, apical/basal ratio changes, or mechanical…
Inspired by active shape morphing in developing tissues and biomaterials, we investigate two generic mechanochemical models where the deformations of a thin elastic sheet are driven by, and in turn affect, the concentration gradients of a…
Versatile manipulation of nano- and microobjects underlies the optomechanics and a variety of its applications in biology, medicine, and lab-on-a-chip platforms. For flexible tailoring optical forces, as well as for extraordinary…
Living organisms are molecular systems with self-sustained dynamics via energy conversion through molecular cooperation, resulting in highly complex macroscopic behaviors. Construction of such autonomous macroscopic dynamics at a molecular…
In many biological systems localized mechanical information is transmitted by mechanically neutral chemical signals. Typical examples include contraction waves in acto-myosin cortex at cellular scale and peristaltic waves at tissue level.…
The actin cortex is a thin layer of actin, myosin, and actin binding proteins that underlies the membrane of most animal cells. It is highly dynamic and can undergo remodelling on time-scales of tens of seconds thanks to protein turnover…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
The morphogenesis of cells and tissues involves an interplay between chemical signals and active forces on their surrounding surface layers. The complex interaction of hydrodynamics and material flows on such active surfaces leads to…
Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…
We use moving light patterns to control the motion of {\it Escherichia coli} bacteria whose motility is photo-activated. Varying the pattern speed controls the magnitude and direction of the bacterial flux, and therefore the accumulation of…