Related papers: Bistability of cell-matrix adhesions resulting fro…
Signal transduction within biological cells is governed by networks of interacting proteins. Communication between these proteins is mediated by signaling molecules which bind to receptors and induce stochastic transitions between different…
Bistability is considered wide-spread among bacteria and eukaryotic cells, useful e.g. for enzyme induction, bet hedging, and epigenetic switching. However, this phenomenon has mostly been described with deterministic dynamic or well-mixed…
Cellular decision-making (CDM) is a dynamic phenomenon often controlled by regulatory networks defining interactions between genes and transcription factor proteins. Traditional studies have focussed on molecular switches such as positive…
Cells in multicellular organisms adhere to the extracellular matrix through two-dimensional clusters spanning a size range from very few to thousands of adhesion bonds. For many common receptor-ligand systems, the ligands are tethered to a…
miRNAs serve as crucial post-transcriptional regulators in various essential cell fate decision. However, the contribution of the mRNA-miRNA mutual regulation to bistability is not fully understood. Here, we built a set of mathematical…
Apoptosis is a highly regulated cell death mechanism involved in many physiological processes. A key component of extrinsically activated apoptosis is the death receptor Fas, which, on binding to its cognate ligand FasL, oligomerize to form…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
We solve the stochastic equations for a cluster of parallel bonds with shared constant loading, rebinding and the completely dissociated state as an absorbing boundary. In the small force regime, cluster lifetime grows only logarithmically…
We consider a theoretical model for membranes with adhesive receptors, or stickers, that are actively switched between two conformational states. In their 'on'-state, the stickers bind to ligands in an apposing membrane, whereas they do not…
The adhesion of biological membranes is controlled by various types of receptor and ligand molecules. In this letter, we present a statistical-mechanical model for membranes that interact via receptor/ligand bonds of two different lengths.…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
The motility of eukaryotic cells is strongly influenced by their environment, with confined cells often developing qualitatively different motility patterns from those migrating on simple two-dimensional substrates. Recent experiments,…
Mechanical cues like the rigidity of the substrate are main determinants for the decision making of adherent cells. Here we use a mechano-chemical model to predict the cellular response to varying substrate stiffness. The model equations…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
Biological systems are majorly dependent on their property of bistability in order to exhibit nongenetic heterogeneity in terms of cellular morphology and physiology. Spatial patterns of phenotypically heterogeneous cells, arising due to…
Bistability, or the coexistence of two stable phases, can be broken by a bias field $h$ destabilising one of the phases via the nucleation and growth of defects. Strong long-range interactions, $1/r^\alpha$ with $\alpha$ less than the…
Cells attach to their environment by means of focal adhesions, which are molecular complexes that exhibit the remarkable ability to adapt to mechanical load by changing their size. Drawing from the biomolecular mechanisms underlying this…
Cell-cell adhesion is one the most fundamental mechanisms regulating collective cell migration during tissue development, homeostasis and repair, allowing cell populations to self-organize and eventually form and maintain complex tissue…
Single receptor-ligand bonds have finite lifetimes, so that biological systems can dynamically react to changes in their environment. In cell adhesion, adhesion bonds usually act cooperatively in adhesion clusters. Outside the cellular…
We illuminate the many-body effects underlying the structure, formation, and dissolution of cellular adhesion domains in the presence and absence of forces. We consider mixed Glauber-Kawasaki dynamics of a two-dimensional model of…