Related papers: Shape-Independent Fluidization in Epithelial Cell …
The collective migration of epithelial groups of cells plays a central role in processes such as embryo development, wound healing, and cancer invasion. While finite cell clusters are known to collectively migrate in response to external…
The vertex model is widely used to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues, because of its simplicity and versatility and the direct inclusion of biophysical parameters. Here, it is shown that quite generally, when cells modify their…
It is widely recognized that the shape of epithelial cells is determined by the tension generated by the actomyosin cortex and the adhesion of cells to the substrate and to each other. To account for these biological and structural…
Many types of motile cells perform durotaxis, namely, directed migration following gradients of substrate stiffness. Recent experiments have revealed that cell monolayers can migrate toward stiffer regions even when individual cells do not…
The morphogenesis of cells and tissues involves an interplay between chemical signals and active forces on their surrounding surface layers. The complex interaction of hydrodynamics and material flows on such active surfaces leads to…
The rheology of pressure-driven flows of two-dimensional dense monodisperse emulsions in neutral wetting microchannels is investigated by means of mesoscopic lattice simulations, capable of handling large collections of droplets, in the…
The structure of polymers at solid interfaces evolves over time, but the corresponding changes in their rheological properties remain poorly understood. Here, using a home-built quartz tuning fork atomic force microscope-based…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…
Macroscopic properties and shapes of biological tissues depend on the remodelling of cell-cell junctions at the microscopic scale. We propose a theoretical framework that couples a vertex model of solid confluent tissues with the dynamics…
Recent advances recognize that the viscoelastic properties of epithelial structures play important roles in biology and disease modeling. However, accessing the viscoelastic properties of multicellular structures in mechanistic or…
The formation of gaps in the endothelium is a crucial process underlying both cancer and immune cell extravasation, contributing to the functioning of the immune system during infection, the unfavorable development of chronic inflammation…
Embryonic tissues deform across broad spatial and temporal scales and relax stress through active rearrangements. A quantitative link between cell-scale activity, spatial forcing, and emergent tissue-scale mechanics remains incomplete.…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…
In the classic theory of solid adhesion, surface energy drives deformation to increase contact area while bulk elasticity opposes it. Recently, solid surface stress has been shown also to play an important role in opposing deformation of…
We consider the impact of surface hydrodynamics on the interplay between curvature and composition in coarsening processes on model systems for biomembranes. This includes scaling laws and equilibrium configurations, which are investigated…
The vertex model is a popular framework for modelling tightly packed biological cells, such as confluent epithelia. Cells are described by convex polygons tiling the plane and their equilibrium is found by minimizing a global mechanical…
Collective cell migration is a highly regulated process involved in wound healing, cancer metastasis and morphogenesis. Mechanical interactions among cells provide an important regulatory mechanism to coordinate such collective motion.…
Using a three-dimensional active vertex model, we numerically study the shapes of strained unsupported epithelial monolayers subject to active junctional noise due to stochastic binding and unbinding of myosin. We find that while uniaxial,…
Eukaryotic cell motility is crucial during development, wound healing, the immune response, and cancer metastasis. Some eukaryotic cells can swim, but cells more commonly adhere to and crawl along the extracellular matrix. We study the…