Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Cellular motility is the spontaneous movement of a cell from one location to another by consumption of energy. The term encompasses several types of motion, including swimming, crawling, gliding and swarming.
Arp2/3 complex forms branched actin filaments for cell movements. Here, the authors report cryo-EM structures of branch junctions with ADP or ADPBeFx (to mimic γ-phosphate) bound to Arp3 to explain why γ-phosphate dissociation destabilizes branches.
Cell motion along linear confinements is deterministic. Now a model predicts deterministic oscillations in cellular polarization at a Y junction in a set-up with adhesive patterns.
Coherent motion of cells plays an important role in morphogenesis. Experiments with cellular rings, supported by numerical simulations, suggest that cell polarity and acto-myosin cables are important factors in the onset of coherence.
The behaviour of actomyosin networks with turnover emerges from the interplay between advection and percolation. The contraction pattern is shown to be size-dependent with continuous contraction in small droplets and periodic waves in larger systems.
A common approach to study bacterial motility is fluorescent labelling, but this can be hampered by protein expression instability and/or interference with bacterial physiology. Here, Abe et al. describe a machine learning-based method for motion tracking of spirochetes on cultured animal cells, which does not require labelling and might be applied to study motility of other bacterial species.
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.
Vertebrate hearing uses mechanosensory cells operating near an oscillatory instability. Physics reveals how this mechanism might have evolved from ‘chance and necessity’.
Regenerative animals accurately regrow lost appendages. Now, research suggests that mechanical waves propagating from the amputation edge have a key role in this process.
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.
Developing tissues undergo collective cell movement and changes to their material properties, such as flow characteristics. Now tissue fluidity is linked to tissue growth.
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.
