Related papers: Stress distribution in contractile cell monolayers
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…
Morphogenesis, tissue regeneration and cancer invasion involve transitions in tissue morphology. These transitions, caused by collective cell migration (CCM), have been interpreted as active wetting/de-wetting transitions. This phenomenon…
Collective behavior in cellular populations is coordinated by biochemical signaling networks within individual cells. Connecting the dynamics of these intracellular networks to the population phenomena they control poses a considerable…
States of self-stress, tensions and compressions of structural elements that result in zero net forces, play an important role in determining the load-bearing ability of structures ranging from bridges to metamaterials with tunable…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
Within developing embryos, tissues flow and reorganize dramatically on timescales as short as minutes. This includes epithelial tissues, which often narrow and elongate in convergent extension movements due to anisotropies in external…
We propose a new model to describe diffusion processes within active deformable media. Our general theoretical framework is based on physical and mathematical considerations, and it suggests to use diffusion tensors directly coupled to…
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…
Confluent cell monolayers and epithelia tissues show remarkable patterns and correlations in structural arrangements and actively-driven collective flows. We simulate these properties using multiphase field models. The models are based on…
Cells in tissues can organize into a broad spectrum of structures according to their function. Drastic changes of organization, such as epithelial-mesenchymal transitions or the formation of spheroidal aggregates, are often associated…
We demonstrate that characteristic nodules emerge in cultures of several malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) cell lines. Instead of excessive local cell proliferation, the nodules arise by Myosin II-driven cell contractility. The…
In this communication, we propose a model to study the non-equilibrium process by which actin stress fibers develop force in contractile cells. The emphasis here is on the non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which is necessary to address the…
The collective behaviour of confluent cell sheets is strongly influenced both by polar forces, arising through cytoskeletal propulsion and by active inter-cellular forces, which are mediated by interactions across cell-cell junctions. We…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
Local stresses in a tissue, a collective property, regulate cell division and apoptosis. In turn, cell growth and division induce active stresses in the tissue. As a consequence, there is a feedback between cell growth and local stresses.…
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…
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…
A mathematical model is proposed for shape evolution and locomotion of fish epidermal keratocytes on elastic substrates. The model is based on mechanosensing concepts: cells apply contractile forces onto the elastic substrate, while cell…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…