From Crawlers to Swimmers - Mathematical and Computational
Problems in Cell Motility
Prof. Hans G. Othmer
School of Mathematics and Digital Technology Center
University of Minnesota
ABSTRACT
Cell locomotion is essential for early development,
angiogenesis, tissue regeneration, the immune response, and
wound healing in multicellular organisms, and plays a very
deleterious role in cancer metastasis in humans. Locomotion
involves the detection and transduction of extracellular
chemical and mechanical signals, integration of the signals
into an intracellular signal, and the spatio-temporal control
of the intracellular biochemical and mechanical responses that
lead to force generation, morphological changes and directed
movement. We will discuss some of the mathematical and
computational challenges that the integration of these
processes poses and describe recent progress on some component
processes.
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