Related papers: A link between ECM plasticity and synaptic morphol…

The shapes of epithelial tissues result from a complex interplay of contractile forces in the cytoskeleta of the cells in the tissue, and adhesion forces between them. A host of discrete, cell-based models describe these forces by assigning…

Cell--cell and cell-matrix adhesions play essential roles in the function of tissues. There is growing evidence for the importance of crosstalk between these two adhesion types, yet little is known about the impact of these interactions on…

Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…

The mechanical properties of thermally excited two-dimensional crystalline membranes can depend dramatically on their geometry and topology. A particularly relevant example is the effect on the crumpling transition of holes in the membrane.…

A new model for the interaction of an electric pulse with a lipid membrane is proposed. Using this model we show that when a DC electric pulse is applied to an insulating lipid membrane separating fluids with different conductivities, the…

Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…

Chromatin is a complex of DNA and specific proteins forming an intermediary level of organization of eukaryotic genomes, between double-stranded DNA and chromosome. Within a generic modeling of the chromatin assembly, we investigate the…

Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…

Cells modify their volume in response to changes in osmotic pressure but it is usually assumed that other active shape variations do not involve significant volume fluctuations. Here we report experiments demonstrating that water transport…

Animal cells in tissues are supported by biopolymer matrices, which typically exhibit highly nonlinear mechanical properties. While the linear elasticity of the matrix can significantly impact cell mechanics and functionality, it remains…

Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue…

A theory of temporally asymmetric Hebb (TAH) rules which depress or potentiate synapses depending upon whether the postsynaptic cell fires before or after the presynaptic one is presented. Using the Fokker-Planck formalism, we show that the…

The behavior of lipid membranes in the presence of an external electric field is studied and used to examine the influence of such fields on membrane parameters such as roughness and show that for a micro sized membrane, roughness grows as…

Synaptic plasticity, the dynamic tuning of signal transmission strength between neurons, serves as a fundamental basis for memory and learning in biological organisms. This adaptive nature of synapses is considered one of the key features…

The electropermeabilization of biological cell membranes by the application of an external field occurs whenever an applied field exceeds a threshold value. For fields above this threshold value but less than another critical value, the…

We propose a model for the dynamics of a probe embedded in a living cell, where both thermal fluctuations and nonequilibrium activity coexist. The model is based on a confining harmonic potential describing the elastic cytoskeletal matrix,…

Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…

Recent studies have revealed the complex structure of nerve signals in axons. There is experimental evidence that the propagation of an electrical signal (action potential) is accompanied by mechanical and thermal effects. In this paper,…

How cells move through the three-dimensional extracellular matrix (ECM) is of increasing interest in attempts to understand important biological processes such as cancer metastasis. Just as in motion on flat surfaces, it is expected that…

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…