Related papers: Mechanical activity enables patterning and discrim…
Eukaryotic cells possess motility mechanisms allowing them not only to self-propel but also to exert forces on obstacles (to push) and to carry cargoes (to pull). To study the inherent asymmetry between active pushing and pulling we model a…
The dispersal of cells from an initially constrained location is a crucial aspect of many physiological phenomena ranging from morphogenesis to tumour spreading. In such processes, the way cell-cell interactions impact the motion of single…
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
Organogenesis involves large deformations and complex shape changes that require elaborate mechanical regulation. Models of tissue biomechanics have been introduced to account for the coupling between mechanical response and biochemical…
The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…
Dendritic cells are antigen presenting cells that provide a vital link between the innate and adaptive immune system. Research into this family of cells has revealed that they perform the role of coordinating T-cell based immune responses,…
Cell signaling networks are complex and often incompletely characterized, making it difficult to obtain a comprehensive picture of the mechanisms they encode. Mathematical modeling of these networks provides important clues, but the models…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
Biomolecular condensates composed of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are vital for proper cellular function, and their dysfunction is associated with diseases including neurodegeneration and cancer. Despite their biological…
The interplay between cytoskeletal architecture and the nonlinearity of the interactions due to bucklable filaments plays a key role in modulating the cell's mechanical stability and affecting its structural rearrangements. We study a model…
For cellular functions like division and polarization, protein pattern formation driven by NTPase cycles is a central spatial control strategy. Operating far from equilibrium, no general theory links microscopic reaction networks and…
How cells with diverse morphologies and cytoskeletal architectures modulate their mechanical behaviors to drive robust collective motion within tissues is poorly understood. During wound repair within epithelial monolayers in vitro, cells…
Pattern formation often occurs in confined systems, yet how boundaries shape patterning dynamics is unclear. We develop techniques to analyze confinement effects in nonlocal advection-diffusion equations, which generically capture the…
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,…
Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…
The Unfolded Protein Response is the cell mechanism for maintaining the balance of properly folded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum , the specialized cellular compartment. Although it is largely studied from a biological point of view,…
A study is made of how active membrane proteins can modify the long wavelength mechanics of fluid membranes. The activity of the proteins is modelled as disturbing the protein surroundings through non-local force distributions of which a…
Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…
In processes such as embryo shaping, wound healing, and malignant cell invasion, epithelial cells transition between dispersed phases, where the cells move independently, and condensed phases, where they aggregate and deform to close gaps,…