We describe a technique for simultaneous quantification of the contractile forces and cytosolic calcium dynamics of muscle fibers embedded in three-dimensional biopolymer gels. We derive a scaling law for linear elastic matrices such as basement membrane extract hydrogels (Matrigel) that allows us t...
Camera images and video recordings are simple and non-invasive tools to investigate animals in their natural habitat. Quantitative evaluations, however, often require an exact reconstruction of object positions, sizes, and distances in the image. Here, we provide an open source software package to p...
Missense mutations in keratin 5 and 14 genes cause the severe skin fragility disorder epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS) by collapsing of the keratin cytoskeleton into cytoplasmic protein aggregates. Despite intense efforts, no molecular therapies are available, mostly due to the complex phenotype ...
The growth of cell colonies is determined by the migration and proliferation of the individual cells. This is often modeled with the Fisher–Kolmogorov (FK) equation, which assumes that cells diffuse independently from each other, but stop to proliferate when their density reaches a critial limit. Ho...
During breeding, king penguins do not build nests, however they show strong territorial behaviour and keep a pecking distance to neighbouring penguins. Penguin positions in breeding colonies are highly stable over weeks and appear regularly spaced, but thus far no quantitative analysis of the struct...
1. Long-term photographic recordings of animal populations provide unique insights into ecological and evolutionary processes. However, image acquisition at remote locations under harsh climatic conditions is highly challenging. 2. We present a robust, energetically self-sufficient and remote-contro...
Scientific applications often require an exact reconstruction of object positions and distances from digital images. Therefore, the images need to be corrected for perspective distortions. We present CameraTransform, a python package that performs a perspective image correction whereby the height, t...
Cell migration through a three-dimensional (3-D) matrix depends strongly on the ability of cells to generate traction forces. To overcome the steric hindrance of the matrix, cells need to generate sufficiently high traction forces but also need to distribute these forces spatially in a migration-pro...
Many cell types in our body, such as fibroblasts, immune cells but also cancer cells, are able to actively migrate and squeeze through the tiny pores and cell layers in our tissue. Similarly, blood cells are passively pushed and squeezed through narrow capillaries. In both cases, the deformability o...
Optical recordings are ubiquitous in current scientific research. As recording and storing images and videos have become simpler and cheaper over the past years, new and more efficient tools are needed to analyse the growing amount of data. While current scientific image analysis tools focus on medi...
Fate and function of anchorage-dependent cells depend on a variety of environmental cues, including those of mechanical nature. Previous progress in the understanding of cellular mechanosensitivity has been closely linked to the availability of artificial cell substrates of adjustable viscoelasticit...
Mechanosensation in many organs (e.g. lungs, heart, gut) is mediated by biosensors (like mechanosensitive ion channels), which convert mechanical stimuli into electrical and/or biochemical signals. To study those pathways, technical devices are needed that apply strain profiles to cells, and ideally...
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly aggressive malignancy with a dismal survival rate. Persistent activation of pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) can perturb the biomechanical homoeostasis of the tumour microenvironment to favour cancer cell invasion. Here we report that ATRA, an acti...
Metastases occur when tumour cells detach from the primary tumour and migrate to distant sites through the connective tissue of organs. During this migration process, the tumour cells generate mechanical forces in order to overcome the resistance of the connective tissue or to change their shape so ...
Search and rescue teams routinely use Bayesian updating to track down crashed airplanes or sunken ships: they draw a map with a first guess of the most probable locations and then continuously update the probability map as new information comes in. Physicists from the University of Erlangen-Nurember...
