Related papers: Electron spin dynamics guide cell motility
Cells have the ability to detect electric fields and respond to them with directed migratory movement. Investigations identified genes and proteins that play important roles in defining the migration efficiency. Nevertheless, the sensing…
Photoreduction of cryptochrome protein in the retina is a well-known mechanism of navigation of birds through the geomagnetic field, yet the biosignal nature of the mechanism remains unclear. The absorption of blue light by the flavin…
Cells crawling through tissues migrate inside a complex fibrous environment called the extracellular matrix (ECM), which provides signals regulating motility. Here we investigate one such well-known pathway, involving mutually antagonistic…
The ability of migratory birds to orient relative to the Earth's magnetic field is believed to involve a coherent superposition of two spin states of a radical electron pair. However, the mechanism by which this coherence can be maintained…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…
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…
Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
How migratory birds can find the right way in navigating over thousand miles is an intriguing question, which much interested researchers in both fields of biology and physics for centuries. There several putative proposals that sound…
Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating…
Birds have a remarkable ability to obtain navigational information from the Earth's magnetic field. The primary detection mechanism of this compass sense is uncertain but appears to involve the quantum spin dynamics of radical pairs formed…
Cell migration is an indispensable physiological and pathological process for normal tissue development and cancer metastasis, which is greatly regulated by intracellular signal pathways and extracellular microenvironment (ECM). However,…
Cell migration is a fundamental process underlying the survival and function of both unicellular and multicellular organisms. Crawling motility in eukaryotic cells arises from cyclic protrusion and retraction driven by the cytoskeleton,…
Experiments on the effect of radio-frequency (RF) magnetic fields on the magnetic compass orientation of migratory birds are analyzed using the theory of magnetic resonance. The results of these experiments were earlier interpreted within…
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…
The migration of cells through tight constricting spaces or along fibrous tracks in tissues is important for biological processes, such as embryogenesis, wound healing, and cancer metastasis, and depends on the mechanical properties of the…
The response of cell populations to external stimuli plays a central role in biological mechanical processes such as epithelial wound healing and developmental morphogenesis. Wave-like propagation of a signal of ERK MAP kinase has been…
The mechanism used by migratory birds to orientate themselves using the geomagnetic field is still a mystery in many species. The radical pair mechanism, in which very weak magnetic fields can influence certain types of spin-dependent…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
The primary step in the elusive ability of migratory birds to sense weak Earth-strength magnetic fields is supposedly the light-induced formation of a long-lived, magnetically sensitive radical pair inside a cryptochrome flavoprotein…