Related papers: Active patterning and asymmetric transport in a mo…
Cell migration in fibreous extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes such as tissue regeneration, immune response and cancer progression. During migration, individual cells can generate active…
Centering and decentering of cellular components is essential for internal organization of cells and their ability to perform basic cellular functions such as division and motility. How cells achieve proper localization of their components…
Cytoskeletal filaments transported by surface immobilized molecular motors with one end pinned to the surface have been observed to spiral in a myosin-driven actin 'gliding assay'. The radius of the spiral was shown to scale with motor…
The actomyosin cytoskeleton, a protein assembly comprising actin fibers and the myosin molecular motor, drives various cellular dynamics through contractile force generation at high densities. However, the relationship between the density…
Biomolecular motor proteins that generate forces by consuming chemical energy obtained from ATP hydrolysis are pivotal for organizing broad cytoskeletal structures in living cells. The control of such cytoskeletal structures benefits…
Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…
Contractile cytoskeletal structures such as fine actomyosin meshworks and stress fibers are essential force-generators for mechanical phenomena in live cells, including motility, morphogenesis, and mechanosensing. While there have been many…
Understanding the structures of biological macromolecules is highly important as they are closely associated with cellular functionalities. Comprehending the precise organization actin filaments is crucial because they form the dynamic…
Mechanically induced unfolding of passive crosslinkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon encountered across the scales from individual macro-molecules to cytoskeletal actin networks. In this paper we study a conceptual model of…
Within living cells, the transport of cargo is accomplished by groups of molecular motors. Such collective transport could utilize mechanisms which emerge from inter-motor interactions in ways that are yet to be fully understood. Here we…
Inspired by recent experiments of cells accumulating on anisotropic substrates, we study a two-dimensional, compressible, isotropic, active fluid in the presence of anisotropic friction. We find that regions of anisotropic friction that are…
The mechanical properties of cells are dominated by the cytoskeleton, an interconnected network of long elastic filaments. The connections between the filaments are provided by crosslinking proteins, which constitute, next to the filaments,…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
Stress generation by the actin cytoskeleton shapes cells and tissues. Despite impressive progress in live imaging and quantitative physical descriptions of cytoskeletal network dynamics, the connection between processes at molecular scales…
Tissue cells are in a state of permanent mechanical tension that is maintained mainly by myosin II minifilaments, which are bipolar assemblies of tens of myosin II molecular motors contracting actin networks and bundles. Here we introduce a…
We present a study on filamentous actin solutions containing heavy meromyosin subfragments of myosin II motor molecules. We focus on the viscoelastic phase behavior and internal dynamics of such networks during ATP depletion. Upon…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
Biological activity gives rise to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the cytoplasm of cells; however, there are few methods to directly measure these fluctuations. Using a reconstituted actin cytoskeleton, we show that the bending dynamics of…
We consider the dynamics of a rigid filament in a motor protein assay under external loading. The motor proteins are modeled as active harmonic linkers with tail ends immobilized on a substrate. Their heads attach to the filament…