The respiratory mucus is a very complex biological material, which possesses both flow and deformation rheological properties, characterized by non-linear and time-dependent viscoelasticity and physical properties of adhesiveness and wettability. Viscosity and elasticity are directly involved in the transport capacity of mucus, whereas wettability and adhesiveness contribute to the optimal inte...

By passing a suspension of polymorphonuclear leucocytes through a parallel-plate chamber their adhesiveness can be assessed by scoring the number of cells trapped on the lower plate, and the fluid shear stress can be defined for a given flow rate. Since the adhesiveness of the cell at the instant of collision must exceed the distractive shear if the cell is to stop, the kinetics of cell accumul...

The intercellular adhesiveness of density-inhibited (D.I.) and fast-growing (F.G.) HeLa cells and of trypsin-treated preparations of these, has been measured at temperatures between 37 and 6 degrees C. In EDTA-containing buffer medium, F.G. cells differ from D.I. cells in that only the former display an increase in adhesiveness below 30 degrees C. This increase is prevented by previous treatmen...

Growing axons use environmental cues to guide them to their targets. One class of cues is thought to be adhesion molecules on cells and in the extracellular matrix that axons interact with as they grow to their targets. In choosing between two possible pathways, the relative adhesiveness of the two substrates could be an important factor in controlling neurite growth. We conducted experiments i...