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Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
A motile cell, when stimulated, shows a dramatic increase in the activity of its membrane, manifested by the appearance of dynamic membrane structures such as lamellipodia, filopodia and membrane ruffles. The external stimulus turns on…
The Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) protein-pigment complex acts as a molecular wire between the outer antenna system and the reaction center (RC); it is an important model system to study the excitonic energy transfer. Recent crystallographic…
Unicellular organisms exhibit elaborate collective behaviors in response to environmental cues. These behaviors are controlled by complex biochemical networks within individual cells and coordinated through cell-to-cell communication.…
Elucidating the architecture and dynamics of large scale genetic regulatory networks of cells is an important goal in systems biology. We study the system level dynamical properties of the genetic network of Escherichia coli that regulates…
Fission yeast G2/M transition is regulated by a biochemical reaction networks which contains four components: Cdc13, Cdc2, Wee1, and Cdc25. This circuit is characterized by the ultrasensitive responses of Wee1 or Cdc25 to Cdc13/Cdc2…
The rheology of biological cells is not only determined by their cytoskeletal networks, but also by the molecular motors that crosslink and contract them. Recently it has been found that the assemblies of myosin II molecular motors in…
Biological networks have evolved to be highly functional within uncertain environments while remaining extremely adaptable. One of the main contributors to the robustness and evolvability of biological networks is believed to be their…
Cellular decision-making based on information received from the external environment is frequently initiated by transmembrane receptors. These receptors are known to propagate such information by triggering a series of irreversible,…
Signal transduction is an important and basic mechanism to cell life activities. The stochastic state transition of receptor induces the release of signaling molecular, which triggers the state transition of other receptors. It constructs a…
Recent work on synthetic rescues has shown that the targeted deletion of specific metabolic genes can often be used to rescue otherwise non-viable mutants. This raises a fundamental biophysical question: to what extent can the whole-cell…
How pattern and form are generated in a reproducible manner during embryogenesis remains poorly understood. Intestinal organoid morphogenesis involves a number of mechanochemical regulators, including cell-type specific cytoskeletal forces…
The functions and elasticities of the cell are largely related to the structures of the cytoskeletons underlying the lipid bi-layer. Among various cell types, the Red Blood Cell (RBC) possesses a relatively simple cytoskeletal structure.…
Bifurcating Markov chains (BMC) are Markov chains indexed by a full binary tree representing the evolution of a trait along a population where each individual has two children. We provide a central limit theorem for additive functionals of…
We study a system of coupled phase oscillators near a saddle-node on an invariant circle bifurcation and driven by random intrinsic frequencies. Under the variation of control parameters, the system undergoes a phase transition changing the…
Many instances of cellular signaling and transcriptional regulation involve switch-like molecular responses to the presence or absence of input ligands. To understand how these responses come about and how they can be harnessed, we develop…
Cellular migration is crucial for biological processes including embryonic development, immune response, and wound healing. The myosin-clutch model is a framework that describes how cells control migration through the interactions between…
Population heterogeneity is ubiquitous among active living systems, but little is known about its role in determining their spatial organization and large-scale dynamics. Combining evidence from synthetic active fluids assembled from…
Cells can sense forces applied to them, but also the stiffness of their environment. These are two different phenomena, and here we investigate the mechanosensitivity of the IInd kind: how the cell can measure an elastic modulus at a single…
Motility initiation in crawling cells requires transformation of a symmetric state into a polarized state. In contrast, motility arrest is associated with re-symmetrization of the internal configuration of a cell. Experiments on keratocytes…