Related papers: Collective cargo hauling by a bundle of parallel m…
Intracellular transport of cargoes in the cell is essential for the organization and functioning cells, especially those that are large and elongated. The cytoskeletal networks inside large cells can be highly complex, and this cytoskeletal…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
Microtubules and motor proteins self organize into biologically important assemblies including the mitotic spindle and the centrosomal microtubule array. Outside of cells, microtubule-motor mixtures can form novel active liquid-crystalline…
Controlling flow-induced segregation in a granular mixture is highly relevant to many industrial settings. To enhance mixing or promote segregation, the continuous gravity flow of a bidisperse granular mixture through a series of narrow…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
The cytoskeleton -- a composite network of biopolymers, molecular motors, and associated binding proteins -- is a paradigmatic example of active matter. Particle transport through the cytoskeleton can range from anomalous and heterogeneous…
In cells and in vitro assays the number of motor proteins involved in biological transport processes is far from being unlimited. The cytoskeletal binding sites are in contact with the same finite reservoir of motors (either the cytosol or…
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…
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…
The sudden arrest of motion due to confinement is commonly observed via the clogging transition in the flow of particles through a constriction. We present results of a simple experiment to elucidate a similar transition in the…
Transport of fluid through a pipe is essential for the operation of macroscale machines and microfluidic devices. Conventional fluids only flow in response to external pressure. We demonstrate that an active isotropic fluid, comprised of…
Microtubules (MTs) are important cytoskeletal structures, engaged in a number of specific cellular activities, including vesicular traffic, cell cyto-architecture and motility, cell division, and information processing within neuronal…
Polymer translocation in crowded environments is a ubiquitous phenomenon in biological systems. We studied polymer translocation through a pore in free, one-sided (asymmetric), and two-sided (symmetric) crowded environments. Extensive…
Transport of molecular motors along protein filaments in a half-closed geometry is a common feature of biologically relevant processes in cellular protrusions. Using a lattice gas model we study how the interplay between active and…
The collective migration of epithelial groups of cells plays a central role in processes such as embryo development, wound healing, and cancer invasion. While finite cell clusters are known to collectively migrate in response to external…
Molecular motors perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
Microtubules (MTs) are dynamic protein filaments essential for intracellular organization and transport, particularly in long-lived cells such as neurons. The plus and minus ends of neuronal MTs switch between growth and shrinking phases,…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
The collective behavior of molecular motor proteins have been investigated in the literature using models to describe the long-time dynamics of a unidimensional continuum motor distribution. Here, we consider the phenomena related to the…
The flow of motor proteins on a filamental track is modelled within the the framework of lattice driven diffusive systems. Motors, considered as hopping particles, perform a highly biased asymmetric exclusion process when bound to the…