Related papers: Coupling between switching regulation and torque g…
Bacterial chemotaxis in Escherichia coli is a canonical system for the study of signal transduction. A remarkable feature of this system is the coexistence of precise adaptation in population with large fluctuating cellular behavior in…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
Models based on surfactant driven instabilities have been employed to describe pattern formation by swarming bacteria. However, by definition, such models cannot account for the effect of bacterial sensing and decision making. Here we…
Brownian rotors play an important role in biological systems and in future nano-technological applications. However the mechanisms determining their dynamics, efficiency and performance remain to be characterized. Here the F0 portion of the…
In bacterial chemotaxis, E. coli cells drift up chemical gradients by a series of runs and tumbles. Runs are periods of directed swimming, and tumbles are abrupt changes in swimming direction. Near the beginning of each run, the rotating…
In living cells, molecular motors convert chemical energy into mechanical work. Its thermodynamic energy efficiency, i.e. the ratio of output mechanical work to input chemical energy, is usually high. However, using two-state models, we…
We systematically investigate how flagellar morphology governs the stability of bacterial Brownian motion, evaluating the effectiveness of a simplified chiral two-body model. This model, which effectively captures the specific bacterial…
Molecular motors are in charge of almost every process in the life cycle of cells, such as protein synthesis, DNA replication, and cell locomotion, hence being of crucial importance for understanding the cellular dynamics. However, given…
We analyze the dynamics of rotary biomotors within a simple nano-electromechanical model, consisting of a stator part and a ring-shaped rotor having twelve proton-binding sites. This model is closely related to the membrane-embedded F$_0$…
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…
Switched Reluctance Motors (SRMs) enable power-efficient actuation with mechanically simple designs. This paper aims to identify the nonlinear relationship between torque, rotor angle, and currents, to design commutation functions that…
Bacterial conglomerates such as biofilms and microcolonies are ubiquitous in nature and play an important role in industry and medicine. In contrast to well-mixed, diluted cultures routinely used in microbial research, bacteria in a…
Respiration in bacteria involves a sequence of energetically-coupled electron and proton transfers creating an electrochemical gradient of protons (a proton-motive force) across the inner bacterial membrane. With a simple kinetic model we…
Intracellular transport is mediated by molecular motors that pull cargos along cytoskeletal filaments. Many cargos move bidirectionally and are transported by two teams of motors which move into opposite directions along the filament. We…
We examine the dynamics of biological nanomotors within a simple model of a rotor having three ion-binding sites. It is shown that in the presence of an external dc electric field in the plane of the rotor, the loading of the ion from the…
We present a theoretical investigation of thermal fluctuation statistics in a molecular motor. Energy transfer in the motor is described using a multidimensional discrete master equation with nearest-neighbor hopping. In this theory, energy…
We describe a new kind of self-propelling motion of bacteria based on the cooperative action of rotating flagella on the surface of bacteria. Describing the ensemble of rotating flagella in the framework of the hydrodynamics with spin the…
Cells are complex structures which require considerable amounts of organization via transport of large intracellular cargo. While passive diffusion is often sufficiently fast for the transport of smaller cargo, active transport is necessary…
Biomolecular motors use free energy to drive a variety of cellular tasks, including the transport of cargo, such as vesicles and organelles. We find that the widely-used `constant-force' approximation for the effect of cargo on motor…
In undulatory locomotion, torques along the body are required to overcome external forces from the environment and bend the body. Using a resistive force theory model, we find that the torque from external resistive forces has a traveling…