Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow,
reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic …

The mechanical behaviour of cells is largely controlled by a structure that is fundamentally
out of thermodynamic equilibrium: a network of crosslinked filaments subjected to the action …

How do growing bacterial colonies get their shapes? While colony morphogenesis is well
studied in two dimensions, many bacteria grow as large colonies in three-dimensional (3D) …

The minimal structural unit of a solid tumor is a single cell or a cellular compartment such as
the nucleus. A closer look inside the cells reveals that there are functional compartments or …

Single and collective cell migration are fundamental processes critical for physiological
phenomena ranging from embryonic development and immune response to wound healing …

Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their
transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling …

Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from
wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For …

Eukaryotic cell movement is characterized by very diverse migration modes. Recent studies
show that cells can adapt to environmental cues, such as adhesion and geometric …

Directional cell motility relies on the ability of single cells to establish a front-rear polarity and
can occur in the absence of external cues. The initiation of migration has often been …

We propose a mechanism for the initiation of cell motility that is based on myosin-induced
contraction and does not require actin polymerization. The translocation of a cell is induced …