Motility articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Orderly or coherent multicellular flows are fundamental in biology, but their triggers are not understood. In epithelial tissues, the tug-of-war between cells is now shown to lead to intrinsic asymmetric distributions in cell polarities that drive such flows.

    • Guillermo A. Gomez

  • Comment |

    Macroscale analogies are a powerful conceptual tool with which we can gain insight into the structures and processes of the microscopic world of cell biology.

    • Michelle A. Baird

  • News & Views |

    Regenerative animals accurately regrow lost appendages. Now, research suggests that mechanical waves propagating from the amputation edge have a key role in this process.

    • Yutaka Matsubayashi

  • News & Views |

    The two-component bacterial MinDE protein system is the simplest biological pattern-forming system ever reported. Now, it establishes a mechanochemical feedback loop fuelling the persistent motion of liposomes.

    • Kerstin Göpfrich

  • News & Views |

    Developing tissues undergo collective cell movement and changes to their material properties, such as flow characteristics. Now tissue fluidity is linked to tissue growth.

    • Asako Shindo

  • News & Views |

    Epithelial tissues cover our organs and play an important role as physical barriers. The conditions leading to spontaneous hole formation in monolayer epithelia, which challenge epithelial integrity, have now been revealed.

    • Tatiana Merle
    •  & Magali Suzanne

  • Letter |

    A continuum active solid system is realized in a bacterial biofilm. Self-sustained elastic waves are observed, and two modes of collective motion with a sharp transition between them are identified.

    • Haoran Xu
    • , Yulu Huang
    •  & Yilin Wu

  • Article |

    Cervix and breast carcinomas are highly heterogeneous in their mechanical properties across scales. This heterogeneity provides the tumour with stability and room for cell motility.

    • Thomas Fuhs
    • , Franziska Wetzel
    •  & Josef A. Käs

  • Article |

    Cilia are composed of cytoskeletal filaments and molecular motors and are characterized by a wave-like motion. Here the authors show that this motion is reconstituted in vitro from the self-assembly of polymerizing actin filaments and myosin motors.

    • Marie Pochitaloff
    • , Martin Miranda
    •  & Pascal Martin

  • Article |

    Living cells change their behaviour in response to the viscosity of the medium surrounding them. An in vitro study shows that cells spread wider and move faster in a highly viscous medium, provided they have an actively ruffling lamellipodium.

    • Matthew Pittman
    • , Ernest Iu
    •  & Yun Chen

  • News & Views |

    Plasmodium sporozoites can move in rotating vortices owing to their chiral shape and mechanical flexibility, revealing important physical aspects of collective motion.

    • Iva M. Tolić
    •  & Isabelle Tardieux

  • News & Views |

    Individual cilia are typically attached to cell surfaces, where they sweep back and forth. A new study charts the behavioural space of the beating patterns of cilia isolated from the cell.

    • Kirsty Y. Wan

  • News & Views |

    • Bart Verberck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The beating of motile cilia arises from the collective action of hundreds of proteins. A study of the dynamics of cilia under different environmental and genetic conditions shows that the space of beating variations is low-dimensional.

    • Veikko F. Geyer
    • , Jonathon Howard
    •  & Pablo Sartori

  • Letter |

    Microswimmers tend to accumulate in regions where their speed is significantly reduced, but experimental and numerical evidence now points towards a viscophobic turning mechanism that biases certain microalgae away from high-viscosity areas.

    • Michael R. Stehnach
    • , Nicolas Waisbord
    •  & Jeffrey S. Guasto

  • News & Views |

    A class of biological matter including elongated cells and filaments can be understood in the framework of active nematic liquid crystals. Within these systems, topological defects emerge and give rise to remarkable collective behaviours.

    • M.-A. Fardin
    •  & B. Ladoux

  • Letter |

    Topological defects in active nematic systems such as epithelial tissues and neural progenitor cells can be associated with biological functions. Here, the authors show that defects can play a role in the layer formation of the soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus.

    • Katherine Copenhagen
    • , Ricard Alert
    •  & Joshua W. Shaevitz

  • Letter |

    Bacteria are able to move as vast, dense collectives. Here the authors show that slow movement is key to this collective behaviour because faster bacteria cause topological defects to collide together and trap cells in place.

    • O. J. Meacock
    • , A. Doostmohammadi
    •  & W. M. Durham

  • Letter |

    Bacteria live in heterogeneous environments, so it is important to investigate their behaviour in porous media. Here the authors show that flow disorder enhances the effect of chemical gradients in micropockets in a porous medium, which then aid the transport of bacteria.

    • Pietro de Anna
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Ruben Juanes

  • Article |

    Symmetry breaking is essential for polarization of cells and generation of left–right body asymmetry. Here the authors investigate the arrangement of hair cells in zebrafish and show that mirror-symmetric patterns arise from a combination of biochemical and mechanical symmetry-breaking events.

    • A. Erzberger
    • , A. Jacobo
    •  & A. J. Hudspeth

  • Letter |

    The motor protein dynein is associated with microtubule force generation in the cell; how it interacts with cytoskeletal fluctuations is still an open question. Here the authors show that dynein can harness these fluctuations to generate power and move faster towards the minus-end of microtubules.

    • Yasin Ezber
    • , Vladislav Belyy
    •  & Ahmet Yildiz

  • News & Views |

    An experimental study of living cells suggests that single myosin molecules are capable of generating unusually large forces. The observation is supported by a theoretical model — and demonstrates the complexity of in vivo force generation.

    • Andrew W. Holle
    •  & Ralf Kemkemer

  • Article |

    Bacteria swimming near surfaces can get trapped in circular trajectories that lead nowhere, hindering efficient surface exploration. A harmful strain of bacteria is now shown to circumvent the problem by exploiting transient surface adhesion events.

    • Emiliano Perez Ipiña
    • , Stefan Otte
    •  & Fernando Peruani

  • News & Views |

    A two-state hopping experiment combined with a dynamical systems model reveals that cancer cells are deterministically driven across barriers, whereas normal cells cross only with the help of stochastic fluctuations.

    • Ulrich S. Schwarz

  • Article |

    Actomyosin networks with rapid turnover self-organize within droplets, forming a dynamic steady-state with persistent flows. The networks exhibit homogeneous, density-independent contraction, implying that active stress scales with viscosity.

    • Maya Malik-Garbi
    • , Niv Ierushalmi
    •  & Kinneret Keren

  • News & Views |

    Many microorganisms use light-sensitive receptors to migrate. A case in point is the microalga Euglena gracilis, which avoids light intensity increases by swimming in polygonal trajectories — providing an elegant solution to navigational challenges.

    • Nicolas Waisbord
    •  & Jeffrey S. Guasto

  • News & Views |

    Cells in embryonic tissues generate coordinated forces to close small wounds rapidly without scarring. New research shows that large cell-to-cell variations in these forces are a key system feature that surprisingly speeds up wound healing.

    • M. Shane Hutson

  • Perspective |

    Robust and responsive, the surface of a cell is as important as its interior when it comes to mechanically regulating form and function. New techniques are shedding light on this role, and a common language to describe its properties is now needed.

    • Alba Diz-Muñoz
    • , Orion D. Weiner
    •  & Daniel A. Fletcher

  • News & Views |

    Streams of motile cells appear in both healthy development and the evolution of tumours. A study of cells under lateral confinement now suggests their activity plays a key role in triggering these flows.

    • Francesc Sagués

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