Related papers: Active gel theory for cell migration with two myos…
Non-processive molecular motors have to work together in ensembles in order to generate appreciable levels of force or movement. In skeletal muscle, for example, hundreds of myosin II molecules cooperate in thick filaments. In non-muscle…
Cells and organisms follow aligned structures in their environment, a process that can generate persistent migration paths. Kinetic transport equations are a popular modelling tool for describing biological movements at the mesoscopic…
From flocks of birds to biomolecular assemblies, systems in which many individual components independently consume energy to perform mechanical work exhibit a wide array of striking behaviors. Methods to quantify the dynamics of these so…
Mechanochemical coupling was studied for two different types of myosin motors in cells: myosin V, which carries cargo over long distances by as a single molecule; and myosin II, which generates a contracting force in cooperation with other…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
We give a description of cell diffusion in a soft tissue, paying special attention to the coupling of force, matter, and microforce balance laws through a suitable dissipation principle. To this end, we cast our framework into a multi-level…
Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…
The internal dynamics of active gels, both in artificial (in-vitro) model systems and inside the cytoskeleton of living cells, has been extensively studied by experiments of recent years. These dynamics are probed using tracer particles…
Cell spreading is investigated at various scales in order to understand motility of living cells which is essential for a range of physiological activities in higher organisms as well as in microbes. At a microscopic scale, it has been seen…
The motility of adherent eukaryotic cells is driven by the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton. Despite the common force-generating actin machinery, different cell types often show diverse modes of locomotion that differ in their shape…
The hydrodynamic theory of active nematics has been often used to describe the spatio-temporal dynamics of cell flows and motile topological defects within soft confluent tissues. Those theories, however, often rely on the assumption that…
Living cells exhibit multi-mode transport that switches between an active, self-propelled motion and a seemingly passive, random motion. Cellular decision-making over transport mode switching is a stochastic process that depends on the…
We extend a model for the morphology and dynamics of a crawling eukaryotic cell to describe cells on micropatterned substrates. This model couples cell morphology, adhesion, and cytoskeletal flow in response to active stresses induced by…
The intracellular environment is a dynamic space filled with various organelles moving in all directions. Included in this diverse group of organelles are vesicles, which are involved in transport of molecular cargo throughout the cell.…
Eukaryotic cell motility involves a complex network of interactions between biochemical components and mechanical processes. The cell employs this network to polarize and induce shape changes that give rise to membrane protrusions and…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
Tuning cell rearrangements is essential in collective cell movement that underlies cancer progression, wound repair, and embryonic development. A key question is how tissue material properties and morphology emerge from cellular factors…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
We study numerically the rheological properties of a slab of active gel close o the isotropic-nematic transition. The flow behavior shows strong dependence on sample size, boundary conditions, and on the bulk constitutive curve, which, on…
Transition from random to persistent cell motility requires spatiotemporal organization of the cytoskeleton and focal adhesions. The influence of these two structures on cell steering can also be gleaned from trypsin de-adhesion…