Related papers: Challenging packaging limits and infectivity of ph…
Single-stranded RNA viruses efficiently encapsulate their genome into a protein shell called the capsid. Electrostatic interactions between the positive charges in the capsid protein's N-terminal tail and the negatively charged genome have…
Phage therapy is an alternative treatment method for bacterial infections. It has shown particular promise in reducing bacterial load while preventing antibiotic resistance. Here, we develop a mathematical model of a bacterial infection…
Bacteriophage viruses, one of the most abundant entities in our planet, lack the ability to move independently. Instead, they crowd fluid environments in anticipation of a random encounter with a bacterium. Once they land on the cell body…
This paper explores a number of questions regarding optimal strategies evolved by viruses upon entry into a vertebrate host. The infected cell life cycle consists of a non-productively infected stage in which it is producing virions but not…
Understanding how virus capsids assemble around their nucleic acid (NA) genomes could promote efforts to block viral propagation or to reengineer capsids for gene therapy applications. We develop a coarse-grained model of capsid proteins…
Bacteriophages (phages) are key regulators of bacterial populations and hold great promise for applications such as phage therapy, biocontrol, and industrial fermentation. The success of these applications depends on accurately determining…
Recent experiments on the bacterial flagellar motor have shown that the structure of this nanomachine, which drives locomotion in a wide range of bacterial species, is more dynamic than previously believed. Specifically, the number of…
Most bacteriophages are known to inject their double-stranded DNA into bacteria upon receptor binding in an essentially spontaneous way. This downhill thermodynamic process from the intact virion toward the empty viral capsid plus released…
As antibiotic resistance grows more frequent for common bacterial infections, alternative treatment strategies such as phage therapy have become more widely studied in the medical field. While many studies have explored the efficacy of…
Bacteria and their viruses ("bacteriophages") coexist in natural environments forming complex infection networks. Recent empirical findings suggest that phage-bacteria infection networks often possess a nested structure such that there is a…
A critical step in the bacteriophage life cycle is genome ejection into host bacteria. The ejection process for double-stranded DNA phages has been studied thoroughly \textit{in vitro}, where after triggering with the cellular receptor the…
The bacterial flagellar motor is an ion-powered transmembrane protein complex which drives swimming in many bacterial species. The motor consists of a cytoplasmic 'rotor' ring and a number of 'stator' units, which are bound to the cell wall…
Bacteria and their bacteriophages are the most abundant, widespread and diverse groups of biological entities on the planet. In an attempt to understand how the interactions between bacteria, virulent phages and temperate phages might…
We show experimentally that a cheap glass microcapillary can accumulate {\lambda}-phage DNA at its tip and deliver the DNA into the capillary using a combination of electro-osmotic flow, pressure-driven flow, and electrophoresis. We develop…
We study a synthetic system of motile Escherichia coli bacteria encapsulated inside giant lipid vesicles. Forces exerted by the bacteria on the inner side of the membrane are sufficient to extrude membrane tubes filled with one or several…
The packaging of genetic material within a protein shell, called the capsid, marks a pivotal step in the life cycle of numerous single-stranded RNA viruses. Understanding how hundreds, or even thousands, of proteins assemble around the…
The question of how stiff polymers are able to pack into small containers is particularly relevant to the study of DNA packaging in viruses. A reduced version of the problem based on coarse-grained representations of the main components of…
Phagocytosis is the process of engulfment and internalization of comparatively large particles by the cell, that plays a central role in the functioning of our immune system. We study the process of phagocytosis by considering a simplified…
We show that a bacteria and bacteriophage system with either a perfectly nested or a one-to-one infection network is permanent, a.k.a uniformly persistent, provided that bacteria that are superior competitors for nutrient devote the least…
Under many in vitro conditions, some small viruses spontaneously encapsidate a single stranded (ss) RNA into a protein shell called the capsid. While viral RNAs are found to be compact and highly branched because of long distance…