Related papers: Superdiffusive motion of membrane-targeting C2 dom…
We study the impact of DNA coiling on the search rate of proteins moving along the DNA contour interspersed by three-dimensional (3D) bulk excursions. When the DNA is coiled proteins performing short 3D hops along a DNA segment can be…
There is increasing evidence that numerous membrane proteins can assemble into aggregates that modulate their function and affect many cellular processes such as signal transduction and endocytosis. Here, we present a theoretical…
We study the Brownian motion of an assembly of mobile inclusions embedded in a fluid membrane. The motion includes the dispersal of the assembly, accompanied by the diffusion of its center of mass. Usually, the former process is much faster…
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…
In eukaryotic cells, mitochondria form networks that range from highly fused interconnected structures to fragmented populations of individual organelles that undergo transient interactions. These structures can be described as temporal…
Protein aggregation on the plasma membrane (PM) is of critical importance to many cellular processes such as cell adhesion, endocytosis, fibrillar conformation, and vesicle transport. Lateral diffusion of protein aggregates or clusters on…
The study of the ability of drug molecules to enter cells through the membrane is of vital importance in the field of drug delivery. In cases where the transport of the drug molecules through the membrane is not easily accomplishable, other…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
Recent experiments by Y. Gambin et al. [PNAS 103, 2098 (2006)] have called into question the applicability of the Saffman-Delbruck diffusivity for proteins embedded in the lipid bilayers. We present a simple argument to account for this…
In this paper we present analytical and random walk based solutions to diffusion in semi-permeable layered media with varying diffusivity. We propose a new random walk transit model (hybrid model) based on treating the membrane permeability…
A topic of intense current investigation pursues the question how the highly crowded environment of biological cells affects the dynamic properties of passively diffusing particles. Motivated by recent experiments we report results of…
We study the thermal Markovian diffusion of tracer particles in a 2D medium with spatially-varying diffusivity $D(r)$, mimicking recently measured, heterogeneous maps of the apparent diffusion coefficient in biological cells. For this…
Diffusive dynamics abound in nature and have been especially studied in physical, biological, and financial systems. These dynamics are characterised by a linear growth of the mean squared displacement (MSD) with time. Often, the conditions…
Diverse processes--e.g. bioremediation, biofertilization, and microbial drug delivery--rely on bacterial migration in disordered, three-dimensional (3D) porous media. However, how pore-scale confinement alters bacterial motility is unknown…
Single-particle tracking allows to infer the motion of single molecules in living cells. When we observe a long trajectory (more than 100 points), it is possible that the particle switches mode of motion over time. Then, fitting a single…
Modelling the propagation of a pulse in a dense {\em milieu} poses fundamental challenges at the theoretical and applied levels. To this aim, in this paper we generalize the telegraph equation to non-ideal conditions by extending the…
Collective migration dominates many phenomena, from cell movement in living systems to abiotic self-propelling particles. Focusing on the early stages of tumor evolution, we enunciate the principles involved in cell dynamics and highlight…
Many protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks take place in the fluid yet structured plasma membrane. Lipid domains, sometimes termed rafts, have been implicated in the functioning of various membrane-bound signaling processes. Here, we…
We investigate the translocation of a stiff polymer consisting of M monomers through a nanopore in a membrane, in the presence of binding particles (chaperones) that bind onto the polymer, and partially prevent backsliding of the polymer…
The understanding of dynamics and functioning of biological membranes and in particular of membrane embedded proteins is one of the most fundamental problems and challenges in modern biology and biophysics. In particular the impact of…