Related papers: Mechanical stability of bipolar spindle assembly
Living cells dynamically modulate the local morphologies of their actin cytoskeletons to perform biological functions, including force transduction, intracellular transport, and cell division. A major challenge is to understand how diverse…
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…
Fragmentation of a spiral arm is thought to drive the formation of giant clumps in galaxies. Using linear perturbation analysis for self-gravitating spiral arms, we derive an instability parameter and define the conditions for clump…
Mechanical forces influence the dynamics of growing tissues. Computer simulations are employed to study the importance of interfacial effects in tissue competition. It was speculated that mechanical pressure determines the competition,…
We investigate how the dynamics of a single chain influences the kinetics of early stage phase separation in a symmetric binary polymer mixture. We consider quenches from the disordered phase into the region of spinodal instability. On a…
The efficient and controlled assembly of complex structures from macromolecular building blocks is a critical open question in both biological systems and nanoscience. Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the self-assembly of…
Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very…
Microtubule (MT) radial arrays or asters establish the internal topology of a cell by interacting with organelles and molecular motors. We proceed to understand the general pattern forming potential of aster-motor systems using a…
Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…
Tissue homeostasis, the biological process of maintaining a steady state in tissue via control of cell proliferation, death, and metabolic function, is essential for the development, growth, maintenance, and proper function of living…
Here we study a driven lattice gas model for microtubule depolymerizing molecular motors, where traffic jams of motors induce stochastic switching between microtubule growth and shrinkage. We term this phenomenon \enquote{traffic dynamic…
We consider the linear axisymmetric stability of a differentially rotating collisionless plasma in the presence of a weak magnetic field; we restrict our analysis to wavelengths much larger than the proton Larmor radius. This is the kinetic…
We analyze the stability and bifurcation structure of steady states in a mechanochemical model of pattern formation in regenerating tissue spheroids. The model couples morphogen dynamics with tissue mechanics via a positive feedback loop:…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
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…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Proliferating cells properly divide into their daughter cells through a process that is mediated by kinetochores, protein-complexes that assemble at the centromere of each sister chromatid. Each kinetochore has to establish a tight bipolar…
During the lifecycle of a virus, viral proteins and other components self-assemble to form a symmetric protein shell called a capsid. This assembly process is subject to multiple competing constraints, including the need to form a…
Protein folding produces characteristic and functional three-dimensional structures from unfolded polypeptides or disordered coils. The emergence of extraordinary complexity in the protein folding process poses astonishing challenges to…
The interplay between cytoskeletal architecture and the nonlinearity of the interactions due to bucklable filaments plays a key role in modulating the cell's mechanical stability and affecting its structural rearrangements. We study a model…