Related papers: Influence of boundary geometry on active patterns
Material renewability in active living systems, such as in cells and tissues, can drive the large-scale patterning of forces, with distinctive phenotypic consequences. This is especially significant in the cell cytoskeleton, where multiple…
The cytoskeleton is a model active matter system that controls diverse cellular processes from division to motility. While both active actomyosin dynamics and actin-microtubule interactions are key to the cytoskeleton's versatility and…
Interaction between active materials and the boundaries of geometrical confinement is key to many emergent phenomena in active systems. For living active matter consisting of animal cells or motile bacteria, the confinement boundary is…
During cell migration, cells become polarized, change their shape, and move in response to various internal and external cues. Cell polarization is defined through the spatio-temporal organization of molecules such as PI3K or small GTPases,…
We investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of adherent cells characterized by a highly anisotropic actin cytoskeleton. Using a combination of theoretical work and experiments on micropillar arrays, we demonstrate that the…
Contractile forces are essential for many developmental processes involving cell shape change and tissue deformation. Recent experiments on reconstituted actomyosin networks, the major component of the contractile machinery, have shown that…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Intracellular protein patterns regulate many vital cellular functions, such as the processing of spatiotemporal information or the control of shape deformations. To do so, pattern-forming systems can be sensitive to the cell geometry by…
Mechanochemical processes on surfaces such as the cellular cortex or epithelial sheets, play a key role in determining patterns and shape changes of biological systems. To understand the complex interplay of hydrodynamics and material flows…
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…
Viewed under a fluorescence microscope, the actomyosin cytoskeleton presents vivid streaks of lines together with persistent oscillatory waves. Using an active hydrodynamic approach, we show how a uniform distribution of single or mixture…
Cell shape changes are largely controlled by the actin cytoskeleton, a dynamic filament network beneath the plasma membrane. Several cell types can form extended free-standing protrusions not supported by an extracellular substrate or…
In living matter, shape fluctuations induced by acto-myosin are usually studied in vitro via reconstituted gels, whose properties are controlled by changing the concentrations of actin, myosin and cross-linkers. Such an approach…
Active fluids generate internal active stress and exhibit unique responses to external forces such as superfluidity and self-yielding transitions. However, how confinement geometry influences these responses remains poorly understood. Here,…
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…
Spatially localised defect structures emerge spontaneously in a hydrodynamic description of an active polar fluid comprising polar 'actin' filaments and 'myosin' motor proteins that (un)bind to filaments and exert active contractile…
When the motion of a motile cell is observed closely, it appears erratic, and yet the combination of nonequilibrium forces and surfaces can produce striking examples of organization in microbial systems. While most of our current…
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…
In the absence of environmental cues, a migrating cell performs an isotropic random motion. Recently, the breaking of this isotropy has been observed when cells move in the presence of asymmetric adhesive patterns. However, up to now the…
The nucleus of the eukaryotic cell functions amidst active cytoskeletal filaments, but its response to the stresses carried by these filaments is largely unexplored. We report here the results of studies of the translational and rotational…