Related papers: Forces at the scale of the cell
Cell layers eliminate unwanted cells through the extrusion process, which underlines healthy versus flawed tissue behaviors. Although several biochemical pathways have been identified, the underlying mechanical basis including the forces…
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
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…
The conditions under which biological cells switch from a static to a motile state are fundamental to the understanding of many healthy and pathological processes. In this paper, we show that even in the presence of a fully symmetric…
Mechanical forces are obviously important in the assembly of three-dimensional multicellular structures, but their detailed role is often unclear. We have used growing microcolonies of the bacterium \emph{Escherichia coli} to investigate…
During morphogenesis, the shape of a tissue emerges from collective cellular behaviors, which are in part regulated by mechanical and biochemical interactions between cells. Quantification of force and stress is therefore necessary to…
Understanding how to produce forces using biomolecular building blocks is essential for the development of adaptive synthetic cells and living materials. Here we ask whether a dynamic polymer system can generate deformation forces in soft…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Cell migration is essential for regulating many biological processes in physiological or pathological conditions, including embryonic development and cancer invasion. In vitro and in silico studies suggest that collective cell migration is…
Cell spreading is investigated at various scales in order to understand motility of living cells which is essential for a range of physiological activities in higher organisms as well as in microbes. At a microscopic scale, it has been seen…
Biomolecules are the prime information processing elements of living matter. Most of these inanimate systems are polymers that compute their structures and dynamics using as input seemingly random character strings of their sequence,…
Modern biology and biomedicine are undergoing a big-data explosion needing advanced computational algorithms to extract mechanistic insights on the physiological state of living cells. We present the motivation for the Cell Physiome: a…
Cellular form and function emerge from complex mechanochemical systems within the cytoplasm. No systematic strategy currently exists to infer large-scale physical properties of a cell from its many molecular components. This is a…
Living cells respond to mechanical changes in the matrix surrounding them by applying contractile forces that are in turn transmitted to distant cells. We calculate the mechanical work that each cell performs in order to deform the matrix,…
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…
Active diffusion of intracellular components is emerging as an important process in cell biology. This process is mediated by complex assemblies of molecular motors and cytoskeletal filaments that drive force generation in the cytoplasm and…
Partitioning of (bio)materials in polymeric mixtures is a key phenomenon both in cellular environments, as well as in industrial applications. In cells, several macromolecules are suspended within different biomolecular phases. On the other…
The dynamic interplay between collective cell movement and the various molecules involved in the accompanying cell signalling mechanisms plays a crucial role in many biological processes including normal tissue development and pathological…
The shape of materials is often subject to a number of geometric constraints that limit the size of the system or fix the structure of its boundary. In soft and biological materials, however, these constraints are not always hard, but are…
Using a minimal model of cells or cohesive cell layers as continuum active elastic media, we examine the effect of substrate thickness and stiffness on traction forces exerted by strongly adhering cells. We obtain a simple expression for…