Abstract
Substrate-based crawling motility of eukaryotic cells is essential for many biological functions, both in developing and mature organisms. Motility dysfunctions are involved in several life-threatening pathologies such as cancer and metastasis. Motile cells are also a natural realisation of active, self-propelled 'particles', a popular research topic in nonequilibrium physics. Finally, from the materials perspective, assemblies of motile cells and evolving tissues constitute a class of adaptive self-healing materials that respond to the topography, elasticity and surface chemistry of the environment and react to external stimuli. Although a comprehensive understanding of substrate-based cell motility remains elusive, progress has been achieved recently in its modelling on the whole-cell level. Here we survey the most recent advances in computational approaches to cell movement and demonstrate how these models improve our understanding of complex self-organised systems such as living cells.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 16019 |
Journal | npj Computational Materials |
Volume | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 15 2016 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Modeling and Simulation
- Materials Science(all)
- Mechanics of Materials
- Computer Science Applications