相关论文: Experimental methods to control pinned and coupled…

Transition from random to persistent cell motility requires spatiotemporal organization of the cytoskeleton and focal adhesions. The influence of these two structures on cell steering can also be gleaned from trypsin de-adhesion…

The compression of soft elastic matter and biological tissue can lead to creasing, an instability where a surface folds sharply into periodic self-contacts. Intriguingly, the unfolding of the surface upon releasing the strain is usually not…

Adhesion-dependent cells actively sense the mechanical properties of their environment through mechanotransductory processes at focal adhesions, which are integrin-based contacts connecting the extracellular matrix to the cytoskeleton. Here…

While mechanobiology has demonstrated that precise control over mechanical properties at the whole-cell level is crucial for many biological functions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the intracellular mechanical properties.…

Cytoskeletal filaments transported by surface immobilized molecular motors with one end pinned to the surface have been observed to spiral in a myosin-driven actin 'gliding assay'. The radius of the spiral was shown to scale with motor…

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…

We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…

In this article we give our perspective on the successes and promise of various molecular and coarse-grained simulation approaches to probing the effect of mechanical forces in the actin cytoskeleton.

We examine the mechanism of bundling of cytoskeletal actin filaments by two representative bundling proteins, fascin and espin. Small-angle X-ray studies show that increased binding from linkers drives a systematic \textit{overtwist} of…

Despite significant advances in understanding neuronal development, a fully quantitative framework that integrates intracellular mechanisms with environmental cues during axonal growth remains incomplete. Here, we present a unified…

Connecting cell behavior to tissue shape and mechanics is a key challenge in the physics of morphogenesis. Cytoskeletal turnover precludes a fixed reference state, and tensions are actively generated independently of strain; so conventional…

Rotational migration is one specific form of collective cell migration when epithelial cells are confined in a spherical geometry, such as in the epithelial acini. This tissue-level rotation motion is crucial for the morphogenesis of…

Many cytoskeletal systems are now sufficiently well known to permit their precise quantitative modelling. Microtubule and actin filaments are well characterized, and the associated proteins are often known, as well as their abundance and…

Inspired by active shape morphing in developing tissues and biomaterials, we investigate two generic mechanochemical models where the deformations of a thin elastic sheet are driven by, and in turn affect, the concentration gradients of a…

The mathematical modeling of the contraction of a muscle is a crucial problem in biomechanics. Several different models of muscle activation exist in literature. A possible approach to contractility is the so-called active strain: it is…

The mechanosensitivity of cells, which determines how they are able to respond to mechanical signals received from their environment, is crucial for the functioning of all biological systems. In experiments, cells placed on cyclically…

Mechanochemical coupling was studied for two different types of myosin motors in cells: myosin V, which carries cargo over long distances by as a single molecule; and myosin II, which generates a contracting force in cooperation with other…

We propose a class of microstructurally informed models for the linear elastic mechanical behavior of cross-linked polymer networks such as the actin cytoskeleton. Salient features of the models include the possibility to represent…

Single-molecule pulling experiments on unstructured proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases have measured rupture forces comparable to those for stable folded proteins. To investigate the structural mechanisms of this unexpected force…

Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…