Related papers: Curvature-driven molecular flows on membrane surfa…
We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…
The transport of individual entities through interconnected structures is a process of practical relevance both in biology and technology. Examples are given by diffusive dynamics of molecules in porous structures. In soft environments,…
Cell migration plays essential roles in development, wound healing, diseases, and in the maintenance of a complex body. Experiments in collective cell migration generally measure quantities such as cell displacement and velocity. The…
Diffusion-driven patterns appear on curved surfaces in many settings, initiated by unstable modes of an underlying Laplacian operator. On a flat surface or perfect sphere, the patterns are degenerate, reflecting translational/rotational…
An elastic bilayer, consisting of an equibiaxially pre-stretched sheet bonded to a stress-free one, spontaneously morphs into curved shapes in the absence of external loads or constraints. Using experiments and numerical simulations, we…
Peripheral membrane proteins can reversibly and specifically bind to biological membranes to carry out functions such as cell signalling, enzymatic activity, or membrane remodelling. Structures of these proteins and of their lipid-binding…
A recently introduced numerical scheme for calculating self-diffusion coefficients of solid objects embedded in lipid bilayer membranes is extended to enable calculation of hydrodynamic interactions between multiple objects. The method is…
The response of cells during spreading and motility is dictated by several multi-physics events, which are triggered by extracellular cues and occur at different time-scales. For this sake, it is not completely appropriate to provide a cell…
From the perspective of physical properties, the cell membrane is an exotic two-dimensional material that has a dual nature: it exhibits characteristics of fluids, i.e., lipid molecules show lateral diffusion, while also demonstrating…
A cell is polarised when it has developed a main axis of organisation through the reorganisation of its cytosqueleton and its intracellular organelles. Polarisation can occur spontaneously or be triggered by external signals, like gradients…
We amplify previous arguments why mean curvature should be used as measure of integration in calculating the effective bending rigidity of fluid membranes subjected to a weak background curvature. The stiffening of the membrane by its…
The disk-to-vesicle transition of a fluid membrane with no spontaneous curvature is well described by the competition between edge line and curvature energies. However, the transition of asymmetric membranes with spontaneous curvatures is…
Random lateral translocation of lipids and proteins is a universal process on membrane surfaces. Local aggregation or organization of lipids and proteins can be induced when this lateral random diffusion is mediated by the electrostatic…
Structure, function and dynamics of many biomolecular systems can be characterized by the energetic variational principle and the corresponding systems of partial differential equations (PDEs). This principle allows us to focus on the…
Fluid membranes made out of lipid bilayers are the fundamental separation structure in eukaryotic cells. Many physiological processes rely on dramatic shape and topological changes (e.g. fusion, fission) of fluid membrane systems. Fluidity…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
A pair of Direct Numerical Simulations is used to investigate curvature and pressure effects. One has a Gaussian test bump and a straight opposite wall, while the other has a straight test wall and a blowing/suction distribution on an…
Common models for two-phase lipid bilayer membranes are based on an energy that consists of an elastic term for each lipid phase and a line energy at interfaces. Although such an energy controls only the length of interfaces, the membrane…
We study theoretically the self-propulsion dynamics of a small droplet on general curved surfaces by a variational approach. A new reduced model is derived based on careful computations for the capillary energy and the viscous dissipation…
The growth of several biological tissues is known to be controlled in part by local geometrical features, such as the curvature of the tissue interface. This control leads to changes in tissue shape that in turn can affect the tissue's…