Related papers: The switching dynamics of the bacterial flagellar …
Many biological processes involve the action of molecular motors that interact with the cell cytoskeleton. Some processes, such as the transport of cargoes is achieved mainly by the action of individual motors. Other, such as cell motility…
Kinesin motors can induce a buckling instability in a microtubule with a fixed minus end. Here we show that by modifying the surface with a protein-repellent functionalization and using clusters of kinesin motors, the microtubule can…
We use in vivo measurements of swimming bacteria in an optical trap to determine fundamental properties of bacterial propulsion. In particular, we determine the propulsion matrix, which relates the angular velocity of the flagellum to the…
Simulations can help unravel the complicated ways in which molecular structure determines function. Here, we use molecular simulations to show how slight alterations of a molecular motor's structure can cause the motor's typical dynamical…
Inputs to signaling pathways can have complex statistics that depend on the environment and on the behavioral response to previous stimuli. Such behavioral feedback is particularly important in navigation. Successful navigation relies on…
The transport by molecular motors along cytoskeletal filaments is studied theoretically in the presence of static defects. The movements of single motors are described as biased random walks along the filament as well as binding to and…
Motivated by the intriguing motility of spirochetes (helically-shaped bacteria that screw through viscous fluids due to the action of internal periplasmic flagella), we examine the fundamental fluid dynamics of superhelices translating and…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
A growing body of work aims at designing and testing micron-scale synthetic swimmers. One method, inspired by the locomotion of flagellated bacteria, consists of applying a rotating magnetic field to a rigid, helically-shaped, propeller…
The flow of motor proteins on a filamental track is modelled within the the framework of lattice driven diffusive systems. Motors, considered as hopping particles, perform a highly biased asymmetric exclusion process when bound to 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…
Many swimming microorganisms, such as bacteria and sperm, use flexible flagella to move through viscoelastic media in their natural environments. In this paper we address the effects a viscoelastic fluid has on the motion and beating…
We develop a numerical framework to simulate the locomotion of a flagellated bacterium with a spheroidal head (such as Escherichia coli) in biological fluids like mucus, which are entangled polymer solutions exhibiting elasto-viscoplastic…
Functional proteins must fold with some minimal stability to a structure that can perform a biochemical task. Here we use a simple model to investigate the relationship between the stability requirement and the capacity of a protein to…
Despite evidence for a hydrodynamic origin of flagellar synchronization between different eukaryotic cells, recent experiments have shown that in single multi-flagellated organisms, coordination hinges instead on direct basal body…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
Stochastic phenotype switching has been suggested to play a beneficial role in microbial populations by leading to the division of labour among cells, or ensuring that at least some of the population survives an unexpected change in…
Bacteria exist in a free-swimming state or in a sessile biofilm state. The transition from free-swimming to sessile mode is characterized by changes in gene expression which alter, among others,the mechanics of flagellar motility. In this…
Cross-linked filament bundles, such as in cilia and flagella, are ubiquitous in biology. They are considered in textbooks as simple filaments with larger stiffness. Recent observations of flagellar counterbend, however, show that induction…
We numerically examine a binary system of particles with repulsive interactions, where one species is driven by a rotating drive and the other is subjected either to a constant drive in a fixed direction or to a rotating drive that is out…