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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…
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…
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,…
Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…
Left-right axis specification establishes embryonic laterality through asymmetric signaling cascades originating at the cellular scale. We previously reported the presence of a directionality bias in confined pairs of endothelial (and…
Cell migration plays a fundamental role in numerous physiological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. While cell-cell adhesion is known to regulate motion by shaping cell morphology and…
During migration cells exhibit a rich variety of seemingly random migration patterns, which makes unraveling the underlying mechanisms that control cell migration a daunting challenge. For efficient migration cells require a mechanism for…
Collective motion of cells is common in many physiological processes, including tissue development, repair, and tumor formation. Recent experiments have shown that certain malignant cancer cells form clusters in a chemoattractant gradient,…
Motile biological cells in tissue often display the phenomenon of durotaxis, i.e. they tend to move towards stiffer parts of substrate tissue. The mechanism for this behavior is not completely understood. We consider simplified models for…
Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…
Cells move differently on substrates with different elasticities. In particular, the persistence time of their motion is higher on stiffer substrates. We show that this behavior will result in a net transport of cells directed up a…
Many cell types display random motility on two-dimensional substrates, but crawl persistently in a single direction when confined in a microchannel or on an adhesive micropattern. Does this imply that the motility mechanism of confined…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
Cell-to-cell variability is inherent to numerous biological processes, including cell migration. Quantifying and characterizing the variability of migrating cells is challenging, as it requires monitoring many cells for long time windows…
Turn-taking behaviour is simulated in a coupled agents system. Each agent is modelled as a mobile robot with two wheels. A recurrent neural network is used to produce the motor outputs and to hold the internal dynamics. Agents are developed…
The mechanisms driving the collective movement of cells remain poorly understood. To contribute toward resolving this mystery, a model was formulated to theoretically explore the possible functions of polarized cell-cell adhesion in…
Migrating cells exhibit various motility patterns, resulting from different migration mechanisms, cell properties, or cell-environment interactions. The complexity of cell dynamics is reflected, e.g., in the diversity of the observed forms…
The migration behavior of colliding cells is critically determined by transient contact-interactions. During these interactions, the motility machinery, including the front-rear polarization of the cell, dynamically responds to surface…
Motivated by rolling adhesion of white blood cells in the vasculature, we study how cells move in linear shear flow above a wall to which they can adhere via specific receptor-ligand bonds. Our computer simulations are based on a Langevin…
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…