How do many groups of organisms, ranging in size from micro-meter scale bacteria, to meter scale birds, form highly co-ordinated groups? One commonly observed dynamic is that of directional alignment of individuals. In this talk I will focus on alignment of elongated cells, with a focus on fibroblasts, which show particularly strong alignment in certain type of scars (keloid scars). To obtain...
Cells sense and respond to their local environment through an integrated network of subcellular structures that convert mechanical and biochemical cues into coordinated biological responses. Understanding how these components interact to regulate cellular mechanosensing and signalling is central to controlling cell behaviour, with applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine....
Cell migration is a ubiquitous and complex process in biology, spanning embryonic development to cancer metastasis. During migration, cells undergo high deformation as they explore the medium or as they traverse narrow pores. Over the last decades, there has been an increasing interest in mathematical models for cell migration, with the particular challenge of integrating dynamic...
Understanding how cells navigate through dense and heterogeneous microenvironments is a fundamental challenge in biomechanics, with direct implications for cancer metastasis, immune surveillance, and tissue morphogenesis. In confined spaces, the nucleus, the largest and stiffest cellular organelle, acts as the primary physical bottleneck, limiting deformability and determining the success of...
Mechanical behavior affects multiple biological scales, from tissue organization to cell migration to subcellular patterning. I will show how CompuCell3D can model different aspects of cell mechanics within a common cell-based framework. CC3D cells are extended, deformable objects with explicit interfaces and subcellular structure, allowing linkage of adhesion, shape, force balance,...
Modeling and simulation become increasingly important to study complex developmental processes across scales and thus constitute an indispensable component of interdisciplinary workflows in quantitative multicellular biology.
Along the lines of a data driven study of collective migration in early zebrafish development, that revealed a novel concept termed โguidance by followersโ...
In this talk, I present a multiscale model for cell migration in fibrous extracellular matrix (ECM) structures. The microscopic dynamics account not only for the classical mechanism of contact guidance, but also for cell morphodynamics in response to the surrounding fibrous environment. Different migration modes and morphological adaptations are considered, together with their interplay. In...
Bacteria colonize surfaces to settle sessile colonies called biofilms. Understanding the formation of these biofilm is of crucial interest for industrial processes, in animal health and in biotechnological applications. Rod-shaped bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa have been extensively studied and modeled in-silico using rigid spherocylinders. However, experimental...
Understanding how cells sense, generate, and respond to physical forces is central to explaining a wide range of biological processes, from collective migration and tissue morphogenesis to tumour invasion and intracellular signalling \cite{Romani_2021}. Mathematical and computational models that integrate the mechanical properties of cells and/or their environment have become essential tools...
