Related papers: Enhanced reaction kinetics in biological cells
Biomolecular condensates play a crucial role in the spatial organization of living matter. These membrane-less organelles, resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation, operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium, with their size and…
The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…
The motion of molecules across channels is critically important for understanding mechanisms of cellular processes. Here we investigate the mechanism of interactions in the molecular transport by analyzing exactly solvable discrete…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
Transport phenomena in out-of-equilibrium systems is immensely important in a myriad of applications in biology, engineering and physics. Complex environments, such as the cytoplasm or porous media, can substantially affect the transport…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…
We analyse a generic motility model, with the motility mechanism arising by contractile stress due to the interaction of myosin and actin. A hydrodynamic active polar gel theory is used to model the cytoplasm of a cell and is combined with…
As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…
Multiple experiments show that various submicron particles such as magnetosomes, RNA messengers, viruses, and even much smaller nanoparticles such as globular proteins diffuse anomalously slow in viscoelastic cytosol of living cells. Hence,…
We present a study of exclusion processes on networks as models for complex transport phenomena and in particular for active transport of motor proteins along the cytoskeleton. We argue that active transport processes on networks…
In many biological systems, the movement of individual agents is commonly characterized as having multiple qualitatively distinct behaviors that arise from various biophysical states. This is true for vesicles in intracellular transport,…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
In cells, cytoskeletal filament networks are responsible for cell movement, growth, and division. Filaments in the cytoskeleton are driven and organized by crosslinking molecular motors. In reconstituted cytoskeletal systems, motor activity…
The eukaryotic cell's cytoskeleton is a prototypical example of an active material: objects embedded within it are driven by molecular motors acting on the cytoskeleton, leading to anomalous diffusive behavior. Experiments tracking the…
Numerous aqueous systems host elements in multiple redox states, with wide ranging implications such as their influence on the formation/dissolution of minerals, water toxicity, and nutrient cycling. To uncover governing mechanisms and…
Molecular communication (MC) is a model of information transmission where the signal is transmitted by information-carrying molecules through their physical transport from a transmitter to a receiver through a communication channel. Prior…
Biological systems tightly regulate their physiological state using control signals. This includes the actomyosin cytoskeleton, a contractile active gel that consumes chemical free energy to drive many examples of cellular mechanical…
Cytoskeletal networks are foundational examples of active matter and central to self-organized structures in the cell. In vivo, these networks are active and heavily crosslinked. Relating their large-scale dynamics to properties of their…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…