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Cell adhesion proteins typically form stable clusters that anchor the cell membrane to its environment. Several works have suggested that cell membrane protein clusters can emerge from a local feedback between the membrane curvature and the…
Eukaryotic cells generally sense chemical gradients using the binding of chemical ligands to membrane receptors. In order to perform chemotaxis effectively in different environments, cells need to adapt to different concentrations. We…
The innate immune system, acting as the first line of host defense, senses and adapts to foreign challenges through complex intracellular and intercellular signaling networks. Endotoxin tolerance and priming elicited by macrophages are…
Experiments suggest that the migration of some cells in the three-dimensional extra cellular matrix bears strong resemblance to one-dimensional cell migration. Motivated by this observation, we construct and study a minimal one-dimensional…
p27$^{Kip1}$ (p27) is an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) that folds upon binding to cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk)$/$cyclin complexes (e.g., Cdk2$/$cyclin A), inhibiting their catalytic activity and causing cell cycle arrest. However,…
Protein fibril accumulation at interfaces is an important step in many physiological processes and neurodegenerative diseases as well as in designing materials. Here we show, using $\beta$-lactoglobulin fibrils as a model, that semiflexible…
Mechanical cues like the rigidity of the substrate are main determinants for the decision making of adherent cells. Here we use a mechano-chemical model to predict the cellular response to varying substrate stiffness. The model equations…
Signal transduction within biological cells is governed by networks of interacting proteins. Communication between these proteins is mediated by signaling molecules which bind to receptors and induce stochastic transitions between different…
We consider a model of an extensible semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a motility assay of motor proteins represented explicitly as active harmonic linkers. Their heads bind stochastically to polymer segments within a…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase (SAHH), a cellular enzyme that plays a key role in methylation reactions including those required for maturation of viral mRNA, is an important drug target in the discovery of antiviral agents. While…
We present a model for the actin contractile ring of adherent animal cells. The model suggests that the actin concentration within the ring and consequently the power that the ring exerts both increase during contraction. We demonstrate the…
Cells measure concentrations of external ligands by capturing ligand molecules with cell surface receptors. The numbers of molecules captured by different receptors co-vary because they depend on the same extrinsic ligand fluctuations.…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Cell adhesion complexes (CACs), which are activated by ligand binding, play key roles in many cellular functions ranging from cell cycle regulation to mediation of cell extracellular matrix adhesion. Inspired by single molecule pulling…
We propose a two-step procedure to detect cointegration in high-dimensional settings, focusing on sparse relationships. First, we use the adaptive LASSO to identify the small subset of integrated covariates driving the equilibrium…
Reliably distinguishing between cells based on minute differences in receptor density is crucial for cell-cell or virus-cell recognition, the initiation of signal transduction and selective targeting in directed drug delivery. Such sharp…
Immune cells recognize and discriminate antigens through immunological synapses - dynamic intercellular junctions exhibiting highly organized receptor-ligand patterns. While much work has focused on molecular kinetics and passive mechanisms…
After discussing the relevance of statistical physics in molecular recognition processes, we present a schematic model for ligand-receptor association based on an Ising chain. We discuss the possible behaviors of the affinity when the…
Mammalian cell polarization and motility are important processes involved in many physiological and pathological phenomena, such as embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. The traditional view of mammalian cell motility…