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Cell colonies of bacteria, tumour cells and fungi, under nutrient limited growth conditions, exhibit complex branched growth patterns. In order to investigate this phenomenon we present a simple hybrid cellular automaton model of cell…
Combining experiments and computer simulations, we use a spatially periodic and flashing light-field to direct the motion of phototactic active colloids. Here, the colloids self-organize into a density spike pattern, which resembles a shock…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
Most passive droplet transport strategies rely on spatial variations of material properties to drive droplet motion, leading to gradient-based mechanisms with intrinsic length scales that limit the droplet velocity or the transport…
In this paper we develop a field-theoretic description for run and tumble chemotaxis, based on a density functional description of crystalline materials modified to capture orientational ordering. We show that this framework, with its…
The bacterium E. coli maneuvers itself to regions with high chemoattractant concentrations by performing two stereotypical moves: `runs', in which it moves in near straight lines, and `tumbles', in which it does not advance but changes…
Spontaneous directed motion, a hallmark of cell biology, is unusual in classical statistical physics. Here we study, using both numerical and analytical methods, organized motion in models of the cytoskeleton in which constituents are…
Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue…
Two-dimensional active nematics are often modeled using phenomenological continuum theories that describe the dynamics of the nematic director and fluid velocity through partial differential equations (PDEs). While these models provide a…
A dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model for the quantitative simulation of biofilm growth controlled by substrate (nutrient) consumption, advective and diffusive substrate transport, and hydrodynamic interactions with fluid flow…
We consider a simple thermodynamically consistent model that captures the self-organized chemomechanical coupling resulting from the interplay between autocatalytically reacting surfactants, the Marangoni effect and wetting dynamics. An…
Run-and-tumble chemotaxis is one of the representative search strategies of an odor source via sensing its spatial gradient. The optimal ways of sensing and control in the run-and-tumble chemotaxis have been analyzed theoretically to…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
This study presents a distributed gradient-based approach to solve system optimal dynamic traffic assignment (SODTA) formulated based on the cell transmission model. The algorithm distributes SODTA into local sub-problems, who find optimal…
Single eukaryotic cells commonly sense and follow chemical gradients, performing chemotaxis. Recent experiments and theories, however, show that even when single cells do not chemotax, clusters of cells may, if their interactions are…
Auto-chemotaxis, the directed movement of cells along gradients in chemicals they secrete, is central to the formation of complex spatiotemporal patterns in biological systems. Since the introduction of the Keller--Segel model, numerous…
Motivated by an ongoing collaboration with clinical oncologists and pathologists, we develop a hybrid partial differential equation--ordinary differential equation (PDE--ODE) framework that captures (i) competition between susceptible and…
We discuss recent progress in the theoretical description of chemotaxis by coupling the diffusion equation of a chemical species to equations describing the motion of sensing microorganisms. In particular, we discuss models for…
We introduce a simulation strategy to consistently couple continuum biomembrane dynamics to the motion of discrete biological macromolecules residing within or on the membrane. The methodology is used to study the diffusion of integral…
The motor part of a crawling eukaryotic cell can be represented schematically as an active continuum layer. The main active processes in this layer are protrusion, originating from non-equilibrium polymerization of actin fibers,…