Related papers: Boundary-induced orientation of dynamic filament n…
We simulate the nonlocal Stokesian hydrodynamics of an elastic filament which is active due a permanent distribution of stresslets along its contour. A bending instability of an initially straight filament spontaneously breaks flow symmetry…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
Large-scale cellular transformations are triggered by subtle physical and structural changes in individual biomacromolecular and membrane components. A prototypical example of such an event is the orchestrated fusion of membranes within an…
A new class of micromechanically motivated chain network models for soft biological tissues is presented. On the microlevel, it is based on the statistics of long chain molecules. A wormlike chain model is applied to capture the behavior of…
A systematic investigation is presented of grain boundaries and grain boundary networks in two dimensional flexible membranes with crystalline order. An isolated grain boundary undergoes a buckling transition at a critical value of the…
Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…
We study overdamped stochastic dynamics confined by hard reflecting boundaries and show that the combination of boundary geometry and an anisotropic diffusion tensor generically generates directed motion. At the level of individual…
The electrostatic contribution to spontaneous membrane curvature is calculated within Poisson-Boltzmann theory under a variety of assumptions and emphasizing parameters in the physiological range. Asymmetric surface charges, either fixed…
In densely-packed two-dimensional systems of growing cells, such as rod-shaped bacteria, a number of experimental and numerical studies report distinct patterns of nematic orientational order in the presence of confinement. So far, these…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
We use colloidal suspensions encapsulated in emulsion droplets to model confined glass-forming liquids with tunable boundary mobility. We show dynamics in these idealized systems are governed by physical interactions with the boundary.…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
Motivated to understand the behavior of biological filaments interacting with membranes of various types, we study a theoretical model for the shape and thermodynamics of intrinsically-helical filaments bound to curved membranes. We show…
Many active fluid systems encountered in biology are set in total geometric confinement. Cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells is a prominent and ubiquitous example, in which cargo-carrying molecular motors move along polymer filaments and…
We study a collection of polar self-propelled particles confined to a long two-dimensional channel. We write the coupled hydrodynamic equations of motion for density and polarisation order parameter. At two confined boundaries, density is…
Active particles, including swimming microorganisms, autophoretic colloids and droplets, are known to self-organize into ordered structures at fluid-solid boundaries. The entrainment of particles in the attractive parts of their spontaneous…
Elastically driven filaments subjected to animating compressive follower forces provide a synthetic way to mimic the oscillatory beating of active biological filaments such as eukaryotic cilia. The dynamics of such active filaments can,…
Pattern formation often occurs in confined systems, yet how boundaries shape patterning dynamics is unclear. We develop techniques to analyze confinement effects in nonlocal advection-diffusion equations, which generically capture the…
Flexible filaments moving in viscous fluids are ubiquitous in the natural microscopic world. For example, the swimming of bacteria and spermatozoa as well as important physiological functions at organ-level, such as the cilia-induced motion…