Related papers: Length-dependent dynamics of microtubules
The cytoplasm of a living cell is crowded with several macromolecules of different shapes and sizes. Molecular diffusion in such a medium becomes anomalous due to the presence of macromolecules and diffusivity is expected to decrease with…
Microtubule dynamics is largely influenced by nucleotide hydrolysis and the resultant tubulin configuration changes. The GTP cap model has been proposed to interpret the stabilizing mechanism of microtubule growth from the view of…
Classical population genetics a priori assigns fitness to alleles without considering molecular or functional properties of proteins that these alleles encode. Here we study population dynamics in a model where fitness can be inferred from…
Multivalent associative proteins with strong complementary interactions play a crucial role in phase separation of intracellular liquid condensates. We study the internal dynamics of such "bond-network" condensates comprised of two…
The scission kinetics of bottle-brush molecules in solution and on an adhesive substrate is modeled by means of Molecular Dynamics simulation with Langevin thermostat. Our macromolecules comprise a long flexible polymer backbone with $L$…
We compare the Rubinstein-Duke model for reptation to a model where the boundary dynamics is modified by calculating the viscosity of polymer melts. The question is investigated whether the viscosity is determined by details of the dynamics…
We investigate stall force and polymerization kinetics of rigid protofilaments in a microtubule or interacting filaments in bundles under an external load force in the framework of a discrete growth model. We introduce the concecpt of…
Signal duration (e.g. the time scales over which an active signaling intermediate persists) is a key regulator of biological decisions in myriad contexts such as cell growth, proliferation, and developmental lineage commitments.…
Understanding the effect of glassy dynamics on the stability of bio-macromolecules and investigating the underlying relaxation processes governing degradation processes of these macromolecules are of immense importance in the context of…
We study the effect of physical confinement on the capillary infiltration of polymers into cylindrical nanopores using molecular dynamics simulations. In particular, we probe whether the critical contact angle above which capillary rise…
By tracking small particles in the bulk of an intensely turbulent flow, we show that even a very small concentration of long-chain polymers disrupts the usual turbulent energy cascade. The polymers affect scales much larger than their…
Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…
Motivated by recent experiments showing the buckling of microtubules in cells, we study theoretically the mechanical response of, and force propagation along elastic filaments embedded in a non-linear elastic medium. We find that, although…
Synthetic polymers have a distribution of chain lengths which can be characterized by dispersity, D. Macroscopic properties of polymers are influenced by chain mobility in the melt and manipulating D can significantly impact these…
Statistical aspects of the dynamics of chaotic scattering in the classical model of $\alpha$-cluster nuclei are studied. It is found that the dynamics governed by hyperbolic instabilities which results in an exponential decay of the…
Adding plasticizers is a well-known procedure to reduce the glass transition temperature in polymers. It has been recently shown that this effect shows a non-monotonic dependence on the size of additive molecules [The Journal of Chemical…
The cellular cytoskeleton is an active material, driven out of equilibrium by molecular motor proteins. It is not understood how the collective behaviors of cytoskeletal networks emerge from the properties of the network's constituent motor…
Since steep declines in a population's size also typically alter its composition, population bottlenecks are considered highly important for evolution. However, despite such significance, the mechanisms governing the impact of a given…
The interaction lifetimes between condensate-forming biomolecules can dictate both the specificity of the condensate-forming species as well as the fluidity and exchange dynamics of these condensates. Using a heuristic modeling approach, we…
We consider the rupture dynamics of a homopolymer chain pulled at one end at a constant loading rate. Our model of the breakable polymer is related to the Rouse chain, with the only difference that the interaction between the monomers is…