Related papers: Active gel theory for cell migration with two myos…
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…
Living cells move thanks to assemblies of actin filaments and myosin motors that range from very organized striated muscle tissue to disordered intracellular bundles. The mechanisms powering these disordered structures are debated, and all…
Living systems often exhibit internal driving: active, molecular processes drive nonequilibrium phenomena such as metabolism or migration. Active gels constitute a fascinating class of internally driven matter, where molecular motors exert…
We investigate the dynamics of an active gel of bundled microtubules that is driven by clusters of kinesin molecular motors. Upon the addition of ATP, the coordinated action of thousands of molecular motors drives the gel to a highly…
The cell motility problem has been investigated for a long time. Today, many biologists, physicists, and mathematicians are looking for new research instruments for this process. A simple 2D model of a free-boundary cell moving on a…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
We reduce a one-dimensional model of an active segment (AS), which is used, for instance, in the description of contraction driven cell motility on tracks, to a zero-dimensional model of an active particle (AP) characterized by two internal…
While cell crawling on a solid surface is relatively well understood, and relies on substrate adhesion, some cells can also swim in the bulk, through mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Here, we propose a minimal model for in-bulk…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of the…
Many cell membrane proteins that bind to actin form dynamic clusters driven by contractile flows generated by the actomyosin machinery at the cell cortex. Recent evidence suggests that a necessary condition for the generation of these…
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,…
The actin cortex is a thin layer of actin filaments and myosin motors beneath the outer membrane of animal cells. It determines the cells' mechanical properties and forms important morphological structures. Physical descriptions of the…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Transport of molecular motors along protein filaments in a half-closed geometry is a common feature of biologically relevant processes in cellular protrusions. Using a lattice gas model we study how the interplay between active and…
Optical tracking in vivo experiments reveal that diffusion of particles in biological cells is strongly enhanced in the presence of ATP and the experimental data for animal cells could previously be reproduced within a phenomenological…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…
Cells are known to exert forces to sense their physical surroundings for guidance of motion and fate decisions. Here, we propose that cells might do mechanical work to drive their own evolution, taking inspiration from the adaptive immune…
During migration, amoeboid cells perform a cycle of quasi-periodic repetitive events (motility cycle). the cell length and the strain energy exchanged with the substrate oscillate in time with an average frequency, f, on top of which are…
Myosin-V is a motor protein responsible for organelle and vesicle transport in cells. Recent single-molecule experiments have shown that it is an efficient processive motor that walks along actin filaments taking steps of mean size close to…
The cytoskeleton relies on diverse populations of motors, filaments, and binding proteins acting in concert to enable non-equilibrium processes ranging from mitosis to chemotaxis. Its versatile reconfigurability, programmed by interactions…