Related papers: Challenging packaging limits and infectivity of ph…
Charge migration along DNA molecules has attracted scientific interest for over half a century. Reports on possible high rates of charge transfer between donor and acceptor through the DNA, obtained in the last decade from solution…
Bacterial genomes are partitioned into kilobases long domains that are topologically independent from each other, meaning that change of DNA superhelicity in one domain does not propagate to neighbours. This is made possible by proteins…
Viruses are nanoscale entities containing a nucleic acid genome encased in a protein shell called a capsid, and in some cases surrounded by a lipid bilayer membrane. This review summarizes the physics that govern the processes by which…
Short peptides with antimicrobial activity have therapeutic potential for treating bacterial infections. Mechanisms of actions for antimicrobial peptides require binding the biological membrane of their target, which often represents a key…
Viral fibers play a central role in many virus infection mechanisms since they recognize the corresponding host and establish a mechanical link to its surface. Specifically, bacteriophages have to anchor to bacteria through the fibers…
This continues work started in part I on a general branching-within-branching model for host-parasite co-evolution. Here we focus on asymptotic results for relevant processes in the case when parasites survive. In particular, limit theorems…
Hydrodynamics and confinement dominate bacterial mobility near solid or air-water boundaries, causing flagellated bacteria to move in circular trajectories. This phenomenon results from the counter-rotation between the bacterial body and…
Molecular machines are stochastic systems that catalyze the energetic processes keeping living cells alive and structured. Inspired by the examples of F1-ATP synthase and the bacterial flagellum, we present a minimal model of an externally…
The rapid worldwide spread of severe viral infections, often involving novel modifications of viruses, poses major challenges to our health care systems. This means that tools that can efficiently and specifically diagnose viruses are much…
Viruses are incapable of autonomous energy production. Although many experimental studies make it clear that viruses are parasitic entities that hijack the host's molecular resources, a detailed estimate for the energetic cost of viral…
When planktonic bacteria adhere together to a surface, they begin to form biofilms, or communities of bacteria. Biofilm formation in a host can be extremely problematic if left untreated, especially since antibiotics can be ineffective in…
Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…
We propose a tractable epidemic model that includes containment measures. In the absence of containment measures, the epidemics spread exponentially fast whenever the infectivity rate is positive, $\lambda>0$. The containment measures are…
E.coli serves as prototype for the study of peritrichous enteric bacteria that perform runs and tumbles alternately. Bacteria run forward as a result of the counterclockwise (CCW) rotation of their flagella bundle and perform tumbles when…
Bacteriophages are central to microbial ecosystems for balancing bacterial populations and promoting evolution by applying strong selection pressure. Here we review some of the known aspects that modulate phage-bacteria interaction in a way…
We report molecular dynamics simulations of the segregation of two overlapping chains in cylindrical confinement. We find that the entropic repulsion between the chains can be sufficiently strong to cause segregation on a time scale that is…
Filamentous cyanobacteria, forming long strands of connected cells, are one of the earliest and most successful forms of life on Earth. They exhibit self-organised behaviour, forming large-scale patterns in structures like biomats and…
We investigate the voltage-driven transport of hybridized DNA through membrane channels. As membrane channels are typically too narrow to accommodate hybridized DNA, the dehybridization of the DNA is the critical rate limiting step in the…
The translocation of a short DNA fragment through a nanopore is addressed when the perforated membrane contains an embedded electrode. Accurate numerical solutions of the coupled Poisson, Nernst-Planck, and Stokes equations for a realistic,…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…