Biological Physics
Bioconvection induced by phototaxis and thermal gradients in an anisotropic (forward) scattering algal suspension is investigated in this article. The suspension is illuminated by collimated irradiation from above and heated either from top…
Low-intensity focused transcranial ultrasonic stimulation (TUS) offers unique depth and precision in non-invasive brain stimulation. Effective administration of TUS, however, requires precise placement of transducers to ensure selective…
Using multiparticle collision dynamics simulations, we investigate the swimming dynamics, orientational behavior, and hydrodynamic interactions of a model swimmer designed to mimic the isolated flagellar apparatus ($FA$) of Chlamydomonas…
Understanding the interplay among processes that occur over different timescales is a challenging issue in the physics of systems regulation. In gene regulation, the timescales for changes in chromatin states can differ from those for…
In natural environments, solid surfaces present both opportunities and challenges for bacteria. On one hand, they serve as platforms for biofilm formation, crucial for bacterial colonization and resilience in harsh conditions. On the other…
Biocatalysis is an emerging field that provides an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional catalysis, but still it faces some challenges. One of the major difficulties for biocatalysts that require reactive species like H2O2 as…
A cell routinely responds to one of many competing environmental cues. A fundamental question is whether the cell follows the cue prioritized by its internal signaling network or the cue that carries the most external information. We…
Growth in bacterial populations generally depends on the environment (availability and quality of nutrients, presence of a toxic inhibitor, product inhibition..). Here, we build a model to describe the action of a bacteriostatic antibiotic,…
British biophysics has a tradition of scientific invention and innovation, resulting in new technologies transforming biological insight, such as rapid DNA sequencing, super-resolution and label-free microscopy, high-throughput and…
Live-cell imaging experiments have shown that the distal dynamics between enhancers and promoters are unexpectedly rapid and incompatible with standard polymer models. The discordance between the compact static chromatin organization and…
Membrane proteins serve a wide range of vital roles in the functioning of living organisms. Compared to other classes of proteins, determining membrane protein structures remains a challenge, in large part due to the difficulty in…
When analyzing the individual positional dynamics of an ensemble of moving objects, the extracted parameters that characterize the motion of individual objects, such as the mean-squared instantaneous velocity or the diffusivity, exhibit a…
Bacterial flagellar swarming enables dense microbial populations to migrate collectively across surfaces, often resulting in emergent, coordinated behaviors. However, probing the underlying energetics of swarming at the single cluster level…
A classic problem in metabolism is that fast-proliferating cells use seemingly wasteful fermentation for energy biogenesis in the presence of sufficient oxygen. This counterintuitive phenomenon, known as overflow metabolism or the Warburg…
Hopfield models, originally developed to study memory retrieval in neural networks, have become versatile tools for modeling diverse biological systems in which function emerges from collective dynamics. In this review, we provide a…
Decision-making is the process of selecting an action among alternatives, allowing biological and artificial systems to navigate complex environments and optimize behavior. While neural systems rely on neuron-based sensory processing and…
Molecular chaperones are machines that consume copious amount of ATP to drive misfolded proteins or RNA to fold into functionally competent native states. Because the folding landscapes of biomolecules with complex native state topology are…
Particle-based stochastic reaction-diffusion (PBSRD) models are a popular approach for capturing stochasticity in reaction and transport processes across biological systems. In some contexts, the overdamped approximation inherent in such…
Control over multiple optical elements that can be dynamically rearranged to yield substantial three-dimensional structural transformations is of great importance to realize reconfigurable plasmonic nanoarchitectures with sensitive and…
Membrane morphology and its dynamic adaptation regulate many cellular functions, which are often mediated by membrane proteins. Advances in DNA nanotechnology have enabled the realization of various protein-inspired structures and functions…