Related papers: Soft matter mechanics of immune cell aggregates
Regulation of contraction in striated muscle is controlled by a dual mechanism involving both thin filaments containing actin and thick filaments containing myosin. The thin filament is activated by calcium ions binding to troponin, leading…
Flocks of birds, schools of fish, mixtures of motors and cytoskeletal filaments, swimming bacteria and driven granular media are systems of interacting motile units that exhibit collective behaviour. These can all be described as active…
Activity and self-generated motion are fundamental features observed in many living and non-living systems. Given that inter-particle adhesive forces are known to regulate particle dynamics, we investigate how adhesion strength controls the…
From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…
The adaptive immune system of vertebrates can detect, respond to, and memorize diverse pathogens from past experience. While the clonal selection of T helper (Th) cells is the simple and established mechanism to better recognize new…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…
Monoclonal antibody solutions are set to become a major therapeutic tool in the years to come, capable of targeting various diseases by clever designing their antigen binding site. However, the formulation of stable solutions suitable for…
Many soft-matter and biophysical systems are composed of monomers which reversibly assemble into rod-like aggregates. The aggregates can then order into liquid-crystal phases if the density is high enough, and liquid-crystal ordering…
We analyze the effect of an external electric field on the electronic structure of molecules which have been recently studied as molecular wires or diodes. We use a self-consistent tight binding technique which provides results in good…
A cornerstone of the classical view of tolerance is the elimination of self-reactive T cells during negative selection in the thymus. However, high-throughput T-cell receptor sequencing data has so far failed to detect substantial…
A promising direction in drug development is to exploit the ability of natural killer cells to kill antibody-labeled target cells. Monoclonal antibodies and drugs designed to elicit this effect typically bind cell-surface epitopes that are…
Soft particles such as microgels and core-shell particles can undergo significant and anisotropic deformations when adsorbed to a liquid interface. This, in turn, leads to a complex phase behavior upon compression. Here we develop a…
The clonal expansion of T cells during an infection is tightly regulated to ensure an appropriate immune response against invading pathogens. Although experiments have mapped the trajectory from expansion to contraction, the interplay…
We analyze the interactions between division, mutation and selection in a simplified evolutionary model, assuming that the population observed can be classified into fitness levels. The construction of our mathematical framework is…
Soft actuators allow to transform external stimuli to mechanical deformations. Because of their deformational response to external magnetic fields, magnetic gels and elastomers represent ideal candidates for such tasks. Mostly, linear…
In multicellular systems, adhesion complexes, such as those composed of E-cadherin and associated catenins, mechanically couple neighboring cells by directly linking their actin-based cytoskeletal assemblies. However, the mechanics of how…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Adhesive interactions between white blood cells and the interior surface of the blood vessels they contact is important in inflammation and in the progression of heart disease. Parallel-plate microchannels have been useful in characterizing…
Cellular decision-making based on information received from the external environment is frequently initiated by transmembrane receptors. These receptors are known to propagate such information by triggering a series of irreversible,…
Cellular form and function emerge from complex mechanochemical systems within the cytoplasm. No systematic strategy currently exists to infer large-scale physical properties of a cell from its many molecular components. This is a…