Related papers: Aging of dynamically stabilized microtubules
The sticking of a soft polystyrene colloidal particle to a planar glass plate was studied by a microrheological technique using an optical tweezer to trap the particle and a piezoelectric-stage to position the plate and to sinusoidally…
The Dynamic Template model of biological cell membranes and the cytoplasm as spatially organised fluid layers is extended to plant cells, and is shown to offer a feasible shear driven mechanism for the co-alignment of internal and external…
Many cellular processes rely on the cell's ability to transport material to and from the nucleus. Networks consisting of many microtubules and actin filaments are key to this transport. Recently, the inhibition of intracellular transport…
Fiber suspensions flowing in structured media are encountered in many biological and industrial systems. Interactions between fibers and the transporting flow as well as fiber contact with obstacles can lead to complex dynamics. In this…
We present experiments showing that a granular system of small beads does exhibit ageing properties : its maximum stability angle is measured to increase logarithmically with resting time, i.e. the time elapsed before performing the…
Biomolecular condensates are cellular phase-separated droplets that usually exhibit a viscoelastic mechanical response. A behavior rationalized by modeling the complex molecules that make up a condensate as stickers and spacers, which…
Motivated by recent experiments showing the buckling of microtubules in cells, we study theoretically the mechanical response of, and force propagation along elastic filaments embedded in a non-linear elastic medium. We find that, although…
We investigate an analytically tractable toy model for thermally induced polymorphic dynamics of cooperatively rearranging biofilaments - like microtubules. The proposed 4 -block model, which can be seen as a coarse-grained approximation of…
Spindles are self-organized microtubule-based structures that segregate chromosomes during cell division. The mass of the spindle is controlled by the balance between microtubule turnover and nucleation. The mechanisms that control the…
Microtubule dynamic instability arises from the hydrolysis of GTP bound to the beta-monomer of the tubulin dimer. The conformational change induced by hydrolysis is unknown, but microtubules disassemble into protofilaments of GDP-bound…
Fiberboids are active filaments trapped at the interface of two phases, able of harnessing energy (and matter) fluxes across the interface in order to produce a rolling-like self-propulsion. We discuss several table-top examples and develop…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in physiological systems. One important function of these networks is to provide mechanical stability for cells and tissues. At physiological levels of connectivity, such networks would be…
Biological growth is often driven by mechanical cues, such as changes in external pressure or tensile loading. Moreover, it is well known that many living tissues actively maintain a preferred level of mechanical internal stress, called the…
Colloidal gels undergo a phenomenon known as physical aging, i.e., a continuous change of their physical properties with time after the gel point. To date, most of the research effort on aging in gels has been focused on suspensions of hard…
A one dimensional trap model for a thermally activated classical particle is introduced to simulate driven dynamics in presence of "ageing" effects. The depth of each trap increases with the time elapsed since the particle has fallen into…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
Generation of mechanical oscillation is ubiquitous to wide variety of intracellular processes. We show that catchbonding behaviour of motor proteins provides a generic mechanism of generating spontaneous oscillations in motor-cytoskeletal…
Directional growth caused by gravitropism and corresponding bending of plant cells has been explored since 19th century, however, many aspects of mechanisms underlying the perception of gravity at the molecular level are still not well…
We study the growth of slip line in a plastically deforming crystal by numerical simulation of a double-ended pile-up model with a dislocation source at one end, and an absorbing wall at the other end. In presence of defects, the pile-up…
Microtubules are inherently dynamic sub-cellular filamentuous polymers that are spatially organized within the cell by motor proteins which cross-link and move microtubules. In-vitro microtubule motility assays, in which motors attached to…