Related papers: Fluids as Dynamic Templates for Cytoskeletal Prote…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
The red blood cell (RBC) membrane is composed of a lipid bilayer and a cytoskeleton interconnected by protein junction complexes, allowing for potential sliding between the lipid bilayer and the cytoskeleton. Despite this biological…
Eukaryote cells have a flexible shape, which dynamically changes according to the function performed by the cell. One mechanism for deforming the cell membrane into the desired shape is through the expression of curved membrane proteins.…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Various biological system models have been proposed in systems biology, which are based on the complex biological reactions kinetic of various components. These models are not practical because we lack of kinetic information. In this paper,…
From multicellular tissues to bacterial colonies, three dimensional cellular structures arise through the interaction of cellular activities and mechanical forces. Simple bacterial communities provide model systems for analyzing such…
In this paper homogenization of a mathematical model for plant tissue biomechanics is presented. The microscopic model constitutes a strongly coupled system of reaction-diffusion-convection equations for chemical processes in plant cells,…
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…
Gyrotactic algae are bottom heavy, motile cells whose swimming direction is determined by a balance between a buoyancy torque directing them upwards and fluid velocity gradients. Gyrotaxis has, in recent years, become a paradigmatic model…
A contemporary procedure to grow artificial tissue is to seed cells onto a porous biomaterial scaffold and culture it within a perfusion bioreactor to facilitate the transport of nutrients to growing cells. Typical models of cell growth for…
Recent experiments have revealed that cytoplasms become glassy when their metabolism is suppressed, while they maintain fluidity in a living state. The mechanism of this active fluidization is not clear, especially for bacterial cytoplasms,…
Complex tissue flows in epithelia are driven by intra- and inter-cellular processes that generate, maintain, and coordinate mechanical forces. There has been growing evidence that cell shape anisotropy, manifested as nematic order, plays an…
Active fluids made of powered suspended particles have unique abilities to self-generate flow and density structures. How such dynamics can be triggered and leveraged by external cues is a key question of both biological and applied…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
Inside every living cell is the cytoplasm: a fluid mixture of thousands of different macromolecules, predominantly proteins. This mixture is where most of the biochemistry occurs that enables living cells to function, and it is perhaps the…
Biomolecules, such as proteins and RNAs, can phase separate in the cytoplasm of cells to form biomolecular condensates. Such condensates are liquid-like droplets that can wet biological surfaces such as membranes. Many molecules that…
Cilia are motile biological appendages that are driven to bend by internal shear stresses between tubulin filaments. A continuum model of ciliary material is constructed that incorporates the essential ciliary constraints: (1)…
Cell shape changes are largely controlled by the actin cytoskeleton, a dynamic filament network beneath the plasma membrane. Several cell types can form extended free-standing protrusions not supported by an extracellular substrate or…
Cell membranes are anchored to the cytoskeleton via immobile inclusions. We investigate the effect of such anchors on the in-plane dynamics of a fluid membrane and mobile inclusions (proteins) embedded in it. The immobile particles lead to…
The mammalian cell membrane is embedded with biomolecular condensates of protein and lipid clusters, which interact with an underlying viscoelastic cytoskeleton network to organize the cell surface and mechanically interact with the…