Related papers: Thermodynamic pathways to genome spatial organizat…
Topological defects, which are singular points in a director field, play a major role in shaping active systems. Here, we experimentally study topological defects and the flow patterns around them, that are formed during the highly rapid…
Cells can often choose among several stably heritable phenotypes. Examples are the expression of genes in eukaryotic cells where long chromosomal regions can adopt persistent and heritable silenced or active states, that may be associated…
The process of protein folding from an unfolded state to a biologically active, folded conformation is governed by many parameters e.g the sequence of amino acids, intermolecular interactions, the solvent, temperature and chaperon…
The dynamic interplay between collective cell movement and the various molecules involved in the accompanying cell signalling mechanisms plays a crucial role in many biological processes including normal tissue development and pathological…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
The transport of macromolecules, such as DNA, through the cytoskeleton is critical to wide-ranging cellular processes from cytoplasmic streaming to transcription. The rigidity and steric hindrances imparted by the network of filaments…
Embryonic development involves pattern formation characterized by the emergence of spatially localized domains characterized by distinct cell fates resulting from differential gene expression. The boundaries demarcating these domains are…
We use mesoscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamics theory to describe RNA unfolding under tension. The theory introduces reaction coordinates, characterizing a continuum of states for each bond in the molecule. The unfolding considered is so…
Instead of the homogeneous ordered particle distributions characteristic to equilibrium systems a self-organizing polydomain structure is found to be stable at low temperatures in a square lattice-gas model with repulsive nearest neighbor…
Nucleosomes form the basic unit of compaction within eukaryotic genomes and their locations represent an important, yet poorly understood, mechanism of genetic regulation. Quantifying the strength of interactions within the nucleosome is a…
A theory for thermomechanical behavior of homogeneous DNA at thermal equilibrium predicts critical temperatures for denaturation under torque and stretch, phase diagrams for stable B--DNA, supercoiling, optimally stable torque, and the…
Lamina-associated domains (LADs) cover a large part of the human genome and are thought to play a major role in shaping the nuclear architectural landscape. Here, we perform polymer simulations, microscopy and mass spectrometry to dissect…
The internal dynamics of strongly interacting systems and that of biomolecules such as proteins display several important analogies, despite the huge difference in their characteristic energy and length scales. For example, in all such…
The field of complex self-assembly is moving toward the design of multi-particle structures consisting of thousands of distinct building blocks. To exploit the potential benefits of structures with such `addressable complexity,' we need to…
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
The earliest molecular dynamics simulations relied on solving the Newtonian or equivalently the Hamiltonian equations of motion for a system. While pedagogically very important as the total energy is preserved in these simulations, they…
Diffusion involving atom transport from one location to another governs many important processes and behaviors such as precipitation and phase nucleation. Local chemical complexity in compositionally complex alloys poses challenges for…
Multicellular organisms comprise a diverse collection of stable tissues built from different cell types. It remains unclear how large numbers of interacting cells can precisely coordinate their gene expression during tissue…
In this review, we discuss modularity and hierarchy in biological systems. We review examples from protein structure, genetics, and biological networks of modular partitioning of the geometry of biological space. We review theories to…
The strong force that binds atomic nuclei is governed by the rules of Quantum Chromodynamics. Here we consider the suggestion the internal quark structure of a nucleon will adjust self-consistently to the local mean scalar field in a…