Biological Physics
Distance control in many-particle systems is a fundamental problem in nature. This becomes particularly relevant in systems of active agents, which can sense their environment and react by adjusting their direction of motion. We employ…
We show, based on a theoretical model, how inertia plays a pivotal role in the survival dynamics of a prey swarm while chased by a predator. With the varying mass of the prey and predator, diverse escape patterns emerge, such as circling,…
Flocking is a fascinating phenomenon observed across a wide range of living organisms. We investigate, based on a simple self-propelled particle model, how the emergence of ordered motion in a collectively moving group is influenced by the…
The traditional degumming method using sodium carbonate solution severely damages the structure of silk fibroin and results in low molecular weight, which limits the properties and applications of silk materials. In this study, we report a…
Mechanical loading generally weakens adhesive structures and eventually leads to their rupture. However, biological systems can adapt to loads by strengthening adhesions, which is essential for maintaining the integrity of tissue and whole…
The motion of cells in tissues is an ubiquitous phenomenon. In particular, in monolayered cell colonies in vitro, pronounced collective behavior with swirl-like motion has been observed deep within a cell colony, while at the same time, the…
Adherent cells exert traction forces on to their environment, which allows them to migrate, to maintain tissue integrity, and to form complex multicellular structures. This traction can be measured in a perturbation-free manner with…
Mechanical forces influence the dynamics of growing tissues. Computer simulations are employed to study the importance of interfacial effects in tissue competition. It was speculated that mechanical pressure determines the competition,…
The collective behavior of active semiflexible filaments is studied with a model of tangentially driven self-propelled worm-like chains. The combination of excluded-volume interactions and self-propulsion leads to several distinct dynamic…
Nutrient gradients and limitations play a pivotal role in the life of all microbes, both in their natural habitat as well as in artificial, microfluidic systems. Spatial concentration gradients of nutrients in densely packed cell…
Sperm are propelled by bending waves travelling along the flagellum. During steering in gradients of sensory cues, sperm adjust the flagellar beat waveform. Symmetric and asymmetric beat waveforms produce straight and curved swimming paths,…
We propose a hydrodynamic model for a spheroidal microswimmer with two tangential surface velocity modes. This model is analytically solvable and reduces to Lighthill's and Blake's spherical squirmer model in the limit of equal major and…
Crossbridge binding and force in active muscle is dependent on the radial spacing between the thick and the thin filaments. This radial lattice spacing has been shown through spatially explicit modeling and experimental efforts to greatly…
In various biological systems information from many noisy molecular receptors must be integrated into a collective response. A striking example is the thermal imaging organ of pit vipers. Single nerve fibers in the organ reliably respond to…
Interest in how democracies form consensus has increased recently, with statistical physics and economics approaches both suggesting that there is convergence to a fixed point in belief networks, but with fluctuations in opinions when there…
Directed collective cell migration is central in morphogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression1,2. Although it is well-accepted that the molecular anisotropy of the micro-environment guides this migration3,4, its impact on the pattern…
Morphogenesis is the process whereby the body of an organism develops its target shape. The morphogen BMP is known to play a conserved role across bilaterian organisms in determining the dorsoventral (DV) axis. Yet, how BMP governs the…
We review the construction and evolution of mathematical models of the Arabidopsis circadian clock, structuring the discussion into two distinct historical phases of modeling strategies: extension and reduction. The extension phase explores…
We investigate the behavior of active Brownian particles (ABP) within a temporal complex network framework approach. We focused on the node degree distribution, average path length, and average clustering coefficient across the P\'eclet…
Complex spatiotemporal patterns in nature significantly challenge reductionism-based modern science. The lack of a paradigm beyond reductionism hinders our understanding of the emergence of complexity. The diversity of countless patterns…