Related papers: Mechanical stability of bipolar spindle assembly
Bacterial microcompartments are large, roughly icosahedral shells that assemble around enzymes and reactants involved in certain metabolic pathways in bacteria. Motivated by microcompartment assembly, we use coarse-grained computational and…
Using computational modelling, we investigate mechanisms of signal transduction focusing on the spindle assembly checkpoint where a single unattached kinetochore is able to signal to prevent cell cycle progression. This inhibitory signal…
In the presence of ATP, molecular motors generate active force dipoles that drive suspensions of protein filaments far from thermodynamic equilibrium, leading to exotic dynamics and pattern formation. Microscopic modelling can help to…
Neither of the two prevalent theories, namely thermodynamic stability and kinetic stability, provides a comprehensive understanding of protein folding. The thermodynamic theory is misleading because it assumes that free energy is the…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…
The proper positioning of the mitotic spindle is crucial for asymmetric cell division and generating cell diversity during development. Proper position in the single-cell embryo of Caenorhabditis elegans is achieved initially by the…
Knotted proteins embed a physical (i.e., open) knot within their native structures. For decades, significant effort has been devoted to elucidating the functional role of knots in proteins, yet no consensus has been reached. Here, using…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
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…
Generation of mechanical oscillation is ubiquitous to wide variety of intracellular processes. We show that catchbonding behaviour of motor proteins provides a generic mechanism of generating spontaneous oscillations in motor-cytoskeletal…
Protein-peptide interactions play essential roles in many cellular processes and their structural characterization is the major focus of current experimental and theoretical research. Two decades ago, it was proposed to employ the steered…
We derive a model describing spatio-temporal organization of an array of microtubules interacting via molecular motors. Starting from a stochastic model of inelastic polar rods with a generic anisotropic interaction kernel we obtain a set…
Protein assembly plays an important role in the regulation of biological systems. The cytoskeleton assembly activity is provided by the binding cofactors GTP (guanidine triphosphate) or ATP(adenosine triphosphate) to monomeric protein, and…
We analyse the dynamics of overlapping antiparallel treadmilling microtubules in the presence of crosslinking processive motor proteins that counterbalance an external force. We show that coupling the force-dependent velocity of motors and…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Understanding the phase behavior of mixtures with many components is important in many contexts, including as a key step toward a physics-based description of intracellular compartmentalization. Here, we study the instabilities of a mixture…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
During cell division, the mitotic spindle moves dynamically through the cell to position the chromosomes and determine the ultimate spatial position of the two daughter cells. These movements have been attributed to the action of cortical…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
The forces that mixtures of motorized and passive crosslinking proteins collectively generate between cytoskeletal filaments within our cells are the key drivers of active cellular mechanics. Despite their importance, a unified theory to…