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The self-assembly of polyhedral shells, each constructed from 60 trapezoidal particles, is simulated using molecular dynamics. The spatial organization of the component particles in this shell is similar to the capsomer proteins forming the…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
The shell map is a very simple representation of the structure of foams, combining the geometrical (random tiling) and dynamical (loss of information from an arbitrary cell out) aspects of disorder. The structure is built from the central…
It is challenging to apply the tenets of individuality to filamentous fungi: a fungal mycelium can contain millions of genetically diverse but totipotent nuclei, each capable of founding new mycelia. Moreover a single mycelium can…
The assembly of filamentous bundles with controlled diameters is common in biological systems and desirable for the development of nanomaterials. We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral…
Animals use past experiences to adapt future behavior. To enable this rapid learning, vertebrates and invertebrates have evolved analogous neural structures like the vertebrate cerebellum or insect mushroom body. A defining feature of these…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Building mathematical models of brains is difficult because of the sheer complexity of the problem. One potential starting point is through basal cognition, which gives abstract representation of a range of organisms without central nervous…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
The "cosmic web", the filamentary large-scale structure in a cold dark matter Universe, is readily apparent via galaxy tracers in spectroscopic surveys. However, the underlying dark matter structure is as of yet unobservable and mapping the…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
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…
Worm-like filaments that are propelled homogeneously along their tangent vector are studied by Brownian dynamics simulations. Systems in two dimensions are investigated, corresponding to filaments adsorbed to interfaces or surfaces. A large…
The effective mixing behavior of solutes in porous media is fundamentally connected to the development of a local mixing interface between the two initial solutions, which is characterized by a complex lamellar structure. The deformation of…
Flocks of birds, schools of fish, mixtures of motors and cytoskeletal filaments, swimming bacteria and driven granular media are systems of interacting motile units that exhibit collective behaviour. These can all be described as active…
Understanding the role of self-propulsion on the conformational properties of active filamentous objects has relevance in biology. In this context, we consider a flexible bead-spring model polymer for which along with both attractive and…
Animal cells are both encapsulated and subdivided by lipid bilayer membranes. Beyond just acting as boundaries, these membranes' shapes influence the function of cells and their compartments. Physically, membranes are two-dimensional fluids…
Conventional micelles, composed of simple amphiphiles, exhibit only a few standard morphologies, each characterized by its mean surface curvature set by the amphiphiles. Here we demonstrate a rational design scheme to construct micelles of…