Related papers: Theory of cell size regulation during migration in…
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…
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
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…
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…
The spatiotemporal coordination and regulation of cell proliferation is fundamental in many aspects of development and tissue maintenance. Cells have the ability to adapt their division rates in response to mechanical constraints, yet we do…
Cell migration plays essential roles in development, wound healing, diseases, and in the maintenance of a complex body. Experiments in collective cell migration generally measure quantities such as cell displacement and velocity. The…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
Cell growth in size is a complex process coordinated by intrinsic and environmental signals. In a recent work [Tzur et al., Science, 2009, 325:167-171], size distributions in an exponentially growing population of mammalian cells were used…
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…
Cell alignment often forms nematic order, which can lead to anomalous collective cell flow due to the so-called active force. Although it is appreciated that cell migration is driven by traction force, a quantitative evaluation of the…
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…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Cells actively regulate their size during the cell cycle to maintain volume homeostasis across generations. While various mathematical models of cell size regulation have been proposed to explain how this is achieved, relating these models…
Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…
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…
Bacteria are highly adaptive microorganisms that thrive in a wide range of growth conditions via changes in cell morphologies and macromolecular composition. How bacterial morphologies are regulated in diverse environmental conditions is a…
In many adult tissues, stem cells and differentiated cells are not homogeneously distributed : stem cells are arranged in periodic "niches", and differentiated cells are constantly produced and migrate out of these niches. In this article,…
We study the effect of correlations in generation times on the dynamics of population growth of microorganisms. We show that any non-zero correlation that is due to cell-size regulation, no matter how small, induces long-term oscillations…
Chemotaxis and haptotaxis have been a main theme in the macroscopic study of bacterial and cellular motility. In this work we investigate the influence these processes have on the shape and motility of fast migrating cells. We note that…
Eukaryotic cells and intracellular pathogens such as bacteria or viruses utilize the actin polymerization machinery to propel themselves forward. Thereby, the onset of motion and choice of direction may be the result of a spontaneous…