Related papers: Keratin Dynamics: Modeling the Interplay between T…
Adhering cells actively probe the mechanical properties of their environment and use the resulting information to position and orient themselves. We show that a large body of experimental observations can be consistently explained from one…
Many cell functions are accomplished thanks to intracellular transport mechanisms of macromolecules along filaments. Molecular motors such as dynein or kinesin are proteins playing a primary role in these processes. The behavior of such…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending 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…
Living tissue is able to withstand large stresses in everyday life, yet it also actively adapts to dynamic loads. This remarkable mechanical behaviour emerges from the interplay between living cells and their non-living extracellular…
The secretion of vesicles for intracellular transport often rely on the aggregation of specialized membrane-bound proteins into a coat able to curve cell membranes. The nucleation and growth of a protein coat is a kinetic process that…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin transitions…
Key to collective cell migration is the ability of cells to rearrange their position with respect to their neighbors. Recent theory and experiments demonstrated that cellular rearrangements are facilitated by cell shape, with cells having…
Traffic-like collective movements are observed at almost all levels of biological systems. Molecular motor proteins like, for example, kinesin and dynein, which are the vehicles of almost all intra-cellular transport in eukayotic cells,…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
The cell cytoskeleton is a striking example of "active" medium driven out-of-equilibrium by ATP hydrolysis. Such activity has been shown recently to have a spectacular impact on the mechanical and rheological properties of the cellular…
The motion of molecules across channels is critically important for understanding mechanisms of cellular processes. Here we investigate the mechanism of interactions in the molecular transport by analyzing exactly solvable discrete…
Compartmentalization into biochemically distinct organelles constantly exchanging material is one of the hallmarks of eukaryotic cells. In the most naive picture of inter-organelle transport driven by concentration gradients, concentration…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
We study a model of cell motility where the condition of optimal trade-off between performance and metabolic cost can be made precise. In this model a steadily crawling fragment is represented by a layer of active gel placed on a frictional…
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
Eukaryotic cells and intracellular pathogens such as bacteria or viruses utilize the actin polymerization machinery to propel themselves forward. Thereby, the onset of motion and choice of direction may be the result of a spontaneous…