Related papers: Cell clusters sense their global shape to drive co…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
The directed migration of cells toward stiffer substrate regions or durotaxis is relevant to tissue development and tumor progression. Here, we introduce a phenomenological model for single cell durotaxis that incorporates both elastic…
The phenomenological model for cell shape deformation and cell migration (Chen et.al. 2018; Vermolen and Gefen 2012) is extended with the incorporation of cell traction forces and the evolution of cell equilibrium shapes as a result of cell…
Many eukaryotic cells chemotax, sensing and following chemical gradients. However, experiments have shown that even under conditions when single cells cannot chemotax, small clusters may still follow a gradient. This behavior has been…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
Understanding the interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix (ECM) during collective cell invasion is crucial for advancements in tissue engineering, cancer therapies, and regenerative medicine. This study focuses on the roles…
Cells coexist together in colonies or as tissues. Their behaviour is controlled by an interplay between intercellular forces and biochemical regulation. We develop a simple model of the cell cycle, the fundamental regulatory network…
T cells use sophisticated shape dynamics (morphodynamics) to migrate towards and neutralise infected and cancerous cells. However, there is limited quantitative understanding of the migration process in 3D extracellular matrices (ECMs) and…
Chemotaxis combines three processes: directional sensing, polarity reorientation and migration. Directed migration plays an important role in immune response, metastasis, wound healing and development. To describe chemotaxis, we extend a…
Cell motility in dense cell collectives is pivotal in various diseases like cancer metastasis and asthma. A central aspect in these phenomena is the heterogeneity in cell motility, but identifying the motility of individual cells is…
The skin forms an efficient barrier against the environment, and rapid cutaneous wound healing after injury is therefore essential. Healing of the uppermost layer of the skin, the epidermis, involves collective migration of keratinocytes,…
Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…
Collective cell migration is essential for a wide range of biological processes such as: morphogenesis, wound healing, and cancer spreading. However, it is well known that migrating epithelial collectives frequently undergo jamming, stay…
The coupling of the internal mechanisms of cell polarization to cell shape deformations and subsequent cell crawling poses many interdisciplinary scientific challenges. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to model the…
We present a general theoretical framework to discuss mechanisms of morphogen transport and gradient formation in a cell layer. Trafficking events on the cellular scale lead to transport on larger scales. We discuss in particular the case…
Coordinated motion of cell monolayers during epithelial wound healing and tissue morphogenesis involves mechanical stress generation. Here we propose a model for the dynamics of epithelial expansion that couples mechanical deformations in…
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…
By modifying and calibrating an active vertex model to experiments, we have simulated numerically a confluent cellular monolayer spreading on an empty space and the collision of two monolayers of different cells in an antagonistic migration…
As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively, whereas variation of shape from cell-to-cell is dismissed most…
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…