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We present a detailed analysis of the micropipet experiments recently reported in J-B. Manneville et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4356--4359 (1999), including a derivation of the expected behaviour of the membrane tension as a function of the…
Supported lipid membranes are useful and important model systems for studying cell membrane properties and membrane mediated processes. One attractive application of supported membranes is the design of phantom cells exhibiting well defined…
The study of cells' dynamical properties is essential to a better understanding of several physiological processes. These properties are directly associated with cells' mechanical parameters experimentally achieved through physical stress.…
We present a minimal model of plasma membrane heterogeneity that combines criticality with connectivity to cortical cytoskeleton. Our model is motivated by recent observations of micron-sized critical fluctuations in plasma membrane…
We theoretically consider specific adhesion of a fluctuating membrane to a hard substrate via the formation of bonds between receptors attached to the substrate and ligands in the membrane. By integrating out the degrees of freedom of the…
Spherical cellular aggregates are in vitro systems to study the physical and biophysical properties of tissues. We present a novel approach to characterize the mechanical properties of cellular aggregates using micropipette aspiration…
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 address the relationship between membrane microheterogeneity and anomalous subdiffusion in cell membranes by carrying out Monte Carlo simulations of two-component lipid membranes. We find that near-critical fluctuations in the membrane…
Whether live cell membranes show miscibility phase transitions (MPTs), and if so, how they fluctuate near the transitions remain outstanding unresolved issues in physics and biology alike. Motivated by these questions we construct a generic…
Many soft biological tissues possess a considerable surface stress, which plays a significant role in their biophysical functions, but most previous methods for characterizing their mechanical properties have neglected the effects of…
Mechanical coupling between a cell and substrate relies on focal adhesions, clusters of adhesion proteins linking stress fibers (bundles of actin proteins) inside the cell with surrounding tissue. Focal adhesions have been demonstrated to…
Using analytical calculations and computer simulations we consider both the lateral diffusion of a membrane protein and the fluctuation spectrum of the membrane in which the protein is embedded. The membrane protein interacts with the…
We investigate the properties of membranes under tension by Monte-Carlo simulations of a generic coarse-grained model for lipid bilayers. We give a comprising overview of the behavior of several membrane characteristics, such as the area…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluctuating fluid membrane on the dynamics of patchy-particle assembly into virus capsid-like cores. Results from simulations for a broad range of parameters are…
We evaluate the effective Hamiltonian governing, at the optically resolved scale, the elastic properties of micro-manipulated membranes. We identify floppy, entropic-tense and stretched-tense regimes, representing different behaviors of the…
We propose a methodology to measure the mechanical properties of membranes from their fluctuations and apply this to optical microscopy measurements of giant unilamellar vesicles of lipids. We analyze the effect of the projection of thermal…
The adhesion of biological membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. Central questions are how the binding kinetics of these proteins is affected by the membranes and by the membrane anchoring…
We analyze the stability of micro-domains of ligand-receptor bonds that mediate the adhesion of biological model membranes. After evaluating the effects of membrane fluctuations on the binding affinity of a single bond, we characterize the…
Fluctuation spectra of fluid compound membrane systems are calculated. The systems addressed contain two (or more) almost parallel membranes that are connected by harmonic tethers or by a continuous, harmonic confining potential.…
We consider the lateral diffusion of a protein interacting with the curvature of the membrane. The interaction energy is minimized if the particle is at a membrane position with a certain curvature that agrees with the spontaneous curvature…