Biological Physics
Widefield stochastic microscopy techniques such as PALM or STORM rely on the progressive accumulation of a large number of frames, each containing a scarce number of super-resolved point images. We justify that the redundancy in the…
The reversible aggregation of red blood cells (RBCs) is a process of erythrocytes clumping that strongly influences the rheological properties of blood. The adhesion of RBCs has been studied extensively in the frame of cell-to-cell…
The anchor of most integral membrane proteins consists of one or several helices spanning the lipid bilayer. The WALP peptide, GWW(LA)$_n$(L)WWA, is a common model helix to study the fundamentals of protein insertion and folding, as well as…
Local interactions, when individuals meet, can regulate collective behavior. In a system without any central control, the rate of interaction may depend simply on how the individuals move around. But interactions could in turn influence…
Single-molecule FRET is widely used to study helicases by detecting distance changes between a fluorescent donor and an acceptor anchored to overhangs of a forked DNA duplex. However, it has lacked single-base pair (1-bp) resolution…
We propose a model for the formation of chromatin loops based on the diffusive sliding of a DNA-bound factor which can dimerise to form a molecular slip-link. Our slip-links mimic the behaviour of cohesin-like molecules, which, along with…
Diffusion can be conceptualized, at microscopic scales, as the random hopping of particles between neighboring lattice sites. In the case of diffusion in inhomogeneous media, distinct spatial domains in the system may yield distinct…
Recent experiments demonstrate that molecular motors from the Myosin II family serve as cross-links inducing active tension in the cytoskeletal network. Here we revise the Brownian ratchet model, previously studied in the context of active…
An effect of membrane surface charge on mechanical properties of the phospholipid bilayer membrane and pores formation is considered. It is shown that the outer and inner surfaces of the phospholipid membrane is always subject to tension,…
The correlation properties of the magnitudes of a time series (sometimes called volatility) are associated with nonlinear and multifractal properties and have been applied in a great variety of fields. Here, we have obtained analytically…
Living cells move thanks to assemblies of actin filaments and myosin motors that range from very organized striated muscle tissue to disordered intracellular bundles. The mechanisms powering these disordered structures are debated, and all…
The protein folding problem is stated and a list of properties that do not depend upon specific molecules is compiled and analyzed. The relationship of this analysis to future simulations is emphasized. The choice of power and time as…
We theoretically show that the initial coherence plays a crucial role in enhancing the speed of excitation energy transfer (EET) in Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex. We choose a simplistic eight-level model considering all the…
The ability of the mammalian ear in processing high frequency sounds, up to $\sim$100 kHz, is based on the capability of outer hair cells (OHCs) responding to stimulation at high frequencies. These cells show a unique motility in their cell…
Georg Von Bekesy was awarded a nobel price in 1961 for his pioneering work on the cochlea function in the mammalian hearing organ. He postulated that the placement of sensory cells in the cochlea corresponds to a specific frequency of…
Vascular plants rely on differences of osmotic pressure to export sugars from regions of synthesis (mature leaves) to sugar sinks (roots, fruits). In this process, known as M\"unch pressure flow, the loading of sugars from photosynthetic…
In many species, sucrose en route out of the leaf migrates from photosynthetically active mesophyll cells into the phloem down its concentration gradient via plasmodesmata, i.e., symplastically. In some of these plants the process is…
Cells are strongly out-of-equilibrium systems driven by continuous energy supply. They carry out many vital functions requiring active transport of various ingredients and organelles, some being small, others being large. The cytoskeleton,…
We present a new theory for modeling forced indentation spectral lineshapes of biological particles, which considers non-linear Hertzian deformation due to an indenter-particle physical contact and bending deformations of curved beams…
Intracellular cargos which are transported by molecular motors move stochastically along cytoskeleton filaments. In particular for bidirectionally transported cargos it is an open question whether the characteristics of their motion can…