Related papers: Growth Velocities of Branched Actin Networks
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…
Inspired by experiments on dynamic extensile gels of biofilaments and motors, we propose a model of a network of linear springs with a kinetics consisting of growth at a prescribed rate, death after a lifetime drawn from a distribution, and…
Actin growth is a fundamental biophysical process and it is, at the same time, a prototypical example of diffusion-mediated surface growth. We formulate a coupled chemo-mechanical, one-dimensional growth model encompassing both material…
Buckling instabilities driven by tissue growth underpin key developmental events such as the folding of the brain. Tissue growth is disordered due to cell-to-cell variability, but the effects of this variability on buckling are unknown.…
The actin and microtubule cytoskeletons are vital structures for cell growth and development across all species. While individual molecular mechanisms underpinning actin and microtubule dynamics have been intensively studied, principles…
Many real systems possess accelerating statistics where the total number of edges grows faster than the network size. In this paper, we propose a simple weighted network model with accelerating growth. We derive analytical expressions for…
Adhesive cell-substrate interactions are crucial for cell motility and are responsible for the necessary traction that propels cells. These interactions can also change the shape of the cell, analogous to liquid droplet wetting on adhesive…
We study the evolution of a random weighted network with complex nonlinear dynamics at each node, whose activity may cease as a result of interactions with other nodes. Starting from a knowledge of the micro-level behaviour at each node, we…
Inspired by experiments on the actin driven propulsion of micrometer sized beads we develop and study a minimal mechanical model of a two-dimensional network of stiff elastic filaments grown from the surface of a cylinder. Starting out from…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Accurately determining and classifying the structure of complex networks is the focus of much current research. One class of network of particular interest are metabolic pathways, which have previously been studied from a graph theoretical…
The parallel computational complexity or depth of growing network models is investigated. The networks considered are generated by preferential attachment rules where the probability of attaching a new node to an existing node is given by a…
Approaches from statistical physics are applied to investigate the structure of network models whose growth rules mimic aspects of the evolution of the world-wide web. We first determine the degree distribution of a growing network in which…
We develop a model to describe the force generated by the polymerization of an array of parallel biofilaments. The filaments are assumed to be coupled only through mechanical contact with a movable barrier. We calculate the filament density…
I analyse a model of an evolving network represented as a directed graph; each node corresponds to one molecular species and the links to catalytic interactions between species. Over short timescales the graph remains fixed while relative…
While actin bundles are used by living cells for structural fortification, the microscopic origin of the elasticity of bundled networks is not understood. Here, we show that above a critical concentration of the actin binding protein…
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 properties of slow crack growth in brittle materials are analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. We propose a model based on a thermally activated rupture process. Considering a 2D spring network submitted to an external load…
The actin cytoskeleton in living cells generates forces in conjunction with myosin motor proteins to directly and indirectly drive essential cellular processes. The semiflexible filaments of the cytoskeleton can respond nonlinearly to the…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…