Related papers: Cell clusters sense their global shape to drive co…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Biological cells sense and respond to mechanical forces, but how such a mechanosensing proccess takes place in a nonlinear inhomogeneous fibrous matrix remains unknown. We show that cells in a fibrous matrix induce deformation fields that…
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…
Mathematical and computational models can assist in gaining an understanding of cell behavior at many levels of organization. Here, we review models in the literature that focus on eukaryotic cell motility at 3 size scales: intracellular…
A fundamental question in biology is to understand how patterns and shapes emerge from the collective interplay of large numbers of cells. Cells forming two-dimensional epithelial tissues behave as active materials that undergo remodeling…
In active matter and living matter, such as clusters of migrating cells, collective dynamics emerges from the underlying interactions. A common assumption of theoretical descriptions of collective cell migration is that these interactions…
The clarification of the motion alignment mechanism in collective cell migration is an important issue commonly in physics and biology. In analogy with the self-propelled disk, the polarity memory effect of eukaryotic cell is a fundamental…
Experimental evidence shows that there is a feedback between cell shape and cell motion. How this feedback impacts the collective behavior of dense cell monolayers remains an open question. We investigate the effect of a feedback that tends…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
Chemotaxis receptors in E. coli form clusters at the cell poles and also laterally along the cell body, and this clustering plays an important role in signal transduction. Recently, experiments using flourrescence imaging have shown that,…
Cell sorting, the segregation of cells with different properties into distinct domains, is a key phenomenon in biological processes such as embryogenesis. We use a phase-field model of a confluent cell layer to study the role of activity in…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Cell migration is a fundamental process involved in physiological phenomena such as the immune response and morphogenesis, but also in pathological processes, such as the development of tumor metastasis. These functions are effectively…
The ability of cells to reorganize in response to external stimuli is important in areas ranging from morphogenesis to tissue engineering. Elongated cells can co-align due to steric effects, forming states with local order. We show that…
During embryonic development, regeneration and homeostasis, cells have to physically integrate into their target tissues, where they ultimately execute their function. Despite a significant body of research on how mechanical forces instruct…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Collective response to external directional cues like electric fields plays a pivotal role in processes such as tissue development, regeneration, and wound healing. In this study we focus on the impact of anisotropy in cell shape and local…
The mechanical deformability of single cells is an important indicator for various diseases such as cancer, blood diseases and inflammation. Lab-on-a-chip devices allow to separate such cells from healthy cells using hydrodynamic forces. We…