Related papers: Enhanced reaction kinetics in biological cells
Molecular signalling in living cells occurs at low copy numbers and is thereby inherently limited by the noise imposed by thermal diffusion. The precision at which biochemical receptors can count signalling molecules is intimately related…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
We show that active transport processes in biological systems can be understood through a local equilibrium description formulated at the mesoscale, the scale to describe stochastic processes. This new approach uses the method established…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
Active materials form a class of far-from-equilibrium systems that are driven internally and exhibit self-organization which can be harnessed to perform mechanical work. Inspired by experiments on synthetic active networks we examine limits…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
While many living biological media combine both viscous and elastic properties, most theoretical studies employ either purely fluid- or solid-like descriptions. We here use a unified framework for active films on substrates capable of…
Activity and renewability are distinctive features of living matter, and constitute a new class of materials that we term renewable active matter. A striking example is the cell cytoskeleton, where myosin filaments bind to the actin…
Transport of molecular motors along protein filaments in a half-closed geometry is a common feature of biologically relevant processes in cellular protrusions. Using a lattice gas model we study how the interplay between active and…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
Many cellular processes require a polarization axis which generally initially emerges as an inhomogeneous distribution of molecular markers in the cell. We present a simple analytical model of a general mechanism of cell polarization taking…
Molecular motors play pivotal roles in organizing the interior of cells. A motor efficient in cargo transport would move along cytoskeletal filaments with a high speed and a minimal error in transport distance (or time) while consuming a…
Biological nanomachines are nanometer-size macromolecular complexes that catalyze chemical reactions in the presence of substrate molecules. The catalytic functions carried out by such nanomachines in the cytoplasm, and biological membranes…
Intracellular transport is essential for maintaining proper cellular function in most eukaryotic cells, with perturbations in active transport resulting in several types of disease. Efficient delivery of critical cargos to specific…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…
The cytoskeleton -- a collection of polymeric filaments, molecular motors, and crosslinkers -- is a foundational example of active matter, and in the cell assembles into organelles that guide basic biological functions. Simulation of…