Related papers: Mechanical activity enables patterning and discrim…
Immune cells learn about their antigenic targets using tactile sense: during recognition, a highly organized yet dynamic motif, named immunological synapse, forms between immune cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Via synapses,…
The cellular basis for the adaptive immune response during antigen recognition relies on a specialized protein interface known as the immunological synapse (IS). Understanding the biophysical basis for protein patterning by deciphering the…
The immunological synapse is a patterned collection of different types of receptors and ligands that forms in the intercellular junction between T Cells and antigen presenting cells (APCs) during recognition. The synapse is implicated in…
Cells are known to exert forces to sense their physical surroundings for guidance of motion and fate decisions. Here, we propose that cells might do mechanical work to drive their own evolution, taking inspiration from the adaptive immune…
Adhesion between a T cell and an antigen presenting cell is achieved by TCR-pMHC and LFA1-ICAM1 protein complexes. These segregate to form a special pattern, known as the immunological synapse (IS), consisting of a central quasi-circular…
T cells are central to the adaptive immune response, capable of detecting pathogenic antigens while ignoring healthy tissues with remarkable specificity and sensitivity. Quantitatively understanding how T cell receptors (TCRs) discriminate…
The actin cortex of an animal cell is a thin polymeric layer attached to the inner side of the plasma membrane. It plays a key role in shape regulation and pattern formation on the cellular and tissue scale and, in particular, generates the…
The clustering of B cell receptor (BCR) molecules and the formation of the protein segregation structure known as the immunological synapse appears to precede antigen (Ag) uptake by B cells. The mature B cell synapse is characterized by a…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…
Competition between synapses arises in some forms of correlation-based plasticity. Here we propose a game theory-inspired model of synaptic interactions whose dynamics is driven by competition between synapses in their weak and strong…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
To ensure faithful information transmission, cells utilize nonequilibrium drives to reduce errors. Kinetic proofreading is a classic mechanism known to sharpen ligand discrimination by T lymphocytes. It remains an open question whether the…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
The actin cortex is a thin layer of actin, myosin, and actin binding proteins that underlies the membrane of most animal cells. It is highly dynamic and can undergo remodelling on time-scales of tens of seconds thanks to protein turnover…
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…
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…
During development, highly ordered structures emerge as cells collectively coordinate with each other. While recent advances have clarified how individual cells process and respond to external signals, understanding collective cellular…