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 …

One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active
generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces …

One of the major challenges in modern biology is to understand how the molecular
components of a living cell operate in a highly noisy environment. What are the specific …

The human eye is bored by monotonous landscapes. We are depressed by gray skies,
unending plains under the wing of an airliner, featureless urban sprawl, geometric …

Collective migration of eukaryotic cells plays a fundamental role in tissue growth, wound
healing and immune response. The motion, arising spontaneously or in response to …

Recent studies at the nanometer scale have revealed that relatively uniform clusters of
adhesion proteins (50–100 nm) constitute the modular units of cell adhesion sites in both …

Binary fluid mixtures are examples of complex fluids whose microstructure and flow are
strongly coupled. For pairs of simple fluids, the microstructure consists of droplets or …

We investigate the mechanics of an active droplet endowed with internal nematic order and
surrounded by an isotropic Newtonian fluid. Using numerical simulations we demonstrate …

The cell is a mechanical machine, and continuum mechanics of the fluid cytoplasm and the
viscoelastic deforming cytoskeleton play key roles in cell physiology. We review …

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