Related papers: Driving forces in cell migration and pattern forma…
The mechanical behaviour and symmetry-breaking shape deformation of red blood cells subjected to shear flows is used to demonstrate that far from being random fluids, both the membrane and cytoplasm of every biological cell undergo…
We develop a theoretical framework for the diffusion of a single unconstrained species of atoms on a crystal lattice that provides a generalization of the classical theories of atomic diffusion and diffusion-induced phase separation to…
Active stresses in biological cells and tissues drive many developmental processes. However, increasing experimental evidence suggests that additional mechanical interactions with surrounding material can play a crucial role in guiding…
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…
Cell sorting, the segregation of cells with different properties into distinct domains, is a key phenomenon in biological processes such as embryogenesis. We use a phase-field model of a confluent cell layer to study the role of activity in…
Growth (and resorption) of biological tissue is formulated in the continuum setting. The treatment is macroscopic, rather than cellular or sub-cellular. Certain assumptions that are central to classical continuum mechanics are revisited,…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…
Cells and other soft particles are often forced to flow in confined geometries in both laboratory and natural environments, where the elastic deformation induces an additional drag and pressure drop across the particle. In contrast with…
In tissue development, wound healing, and cancer invasion, coordinated cell motion arises from active forces produced by the cells. The relationship between force and motion remains unclear, however, because the forces result from a sum of…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
A diffuse-interface model for microstructure with an arbitrary number of components and phases was developed from basic thermodynamic and kinetic principles and formalized within a variational framework. The model includes a composition…
Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…
The cytoskeleton is an important subsystem of cells that is involved for example in cell division and locomotion. It consists of filaments that are cross-linked by molecular motors that can induce relative sliding between filaments and…
To explain the differentiation of stem cells in terms of dynamical systems theory, models of interacting cells with intracellular protein expression dynamics are analyzed and simulated. Simulations were carried out for all possible protein…
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…
A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the developing…
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
In tissues as diverse as amphibian skin and the human airway, the cilia that propel fluid are grouped in sparsely distributed multiciliated cells (MCCs). We investigate fluid transport in this "mosaic" architecture, with emphasis on the…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…