Related papers: Multibody simulation of adhesion pili
We present a simple yet generic model for the behavior of a system of many surface-attached flexible polymers with rigid side chains. Beyond its potential application in describing the dynamics of the extracellular matrix of mammalian…
Two types of high-strength composite hydrogels possessing the structure of interpenetrating polymer networks were synthesized via free-radical polymerization of acrylamide carried out straight within the matrix of plant or bacterial…
The equilibrium structure and dynamics of a single polymer chain in a thermal solvent is by now well-understood in terms of scaling laws. Here we consider a polymer in a bacterial bath, i.e. in a solvent consisting of active particles which…
A multicomponent multiphase reactive transport simulator has been developed to facilitate the investigation of a large variety of phenomena in porous media including component transport, diffusion, microbiological growth and decay, cell…
Guided movement in response to slowly diffusing polymeric trails provides a unique mechanism for self-organization of some microorganisms. To elucidate how this signaling route leads to microcolony formation, we experimentally probe the…
A wide spectrum of Peritrichous bacteria undergo considerable physiological changes when they are inoculated onto nutrition-rich surfaces and exhibit a rapid and collective migration denoted as swarming. Thereby, the length of such swarmer…
Numerous studies have explored the link between bacterial swimming and the number of flagella, a distinguishing feature of motile multiflagellated bacteria. We revisit this open question using augmented slender-body theory simulations, in…
Flagellated microorganisms overcome the low-Reynolds-number time reversibility by rotating helical flagella. For peritrichous bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, the randomly distributed flagellar filaments align along the same direction to…
Using numerical simulations, we characterized the behavior of an elastic membrane immersed in an active fluid. Our findings reveal a nontrivial folding and re-expansion of the membrane that is controlled by the interplay of its resistance…
A reduced model, which can fold both helix and sheet structures, is proposed to study the problem of protein folding. The goal of this model is to find an unbiased effective potential that has included the effects of water and at the same…
An extension of the Asakura-Oosawa-Vrij model of hard sphere colloids and non-adsorbing polymers, that takes polymer non-ideality into account through a repulsive stepfunction pair potential between polymers, is studied with grand canonical…
A mesoscopic coarse-grain model for computationally-efficient simulations of biomembranes is presented. It combines molecular dynamics simulations for the lipids, modeled as elastic chains of beads, with multiparticle collision dynamics for…
We present a mathematical model of polymer bilayers that undergo large bending deformations when actuated by non-mechanical stimuli such as thermal effects. The simple model captures a large class of nonlinear bending effects and can be…
Biological adhesion is a critical mechanical function of complex organisms operating at multiple scales. At the cellular scale, cell-cell adhesion is remarkably tunable to enable both cohesion and malleability during development,…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be…
Myxococcus xanthus is a model organism for studying bacterial social behaviors due to its ability to form complex multi-cellular structures. Knowledge of M. xanthus surface gliding motility and the mechanisms that coordinate it are…
The motility of certain gram-negative bacteria is mediated by retraction of type IV pili surface filaments, which are essential for infectivity. The retraction is powered by a strong molecular motor protein, PilT, producing very high forces…
We study the conformations of polymer chains in a poor solvent, with and without bending rigidity, by means of a simple statistical mechanics model. This model can be exactly solved for chains of length up to N=55 using exact enumeration…
We study a synthetic system of motile Escherichia coli bacteria encapsulated inside giant lipid vesicles. Forces exerted by the bacteria on the inner side of the membrane are sufficient to extrude membrane tubes filled with one or several…