Related papers: Nonlinear amplitude dynamics in flagellar beating
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
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 cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells provides mechanical support and governs intracellular transport. These functions rely on the complex mechanical properties of networks of semiflexible protein filaments. Recent theoretical interest has…
Two elastically coupled nanomechanical resonators driven independently near their resonance frequencies show intricate nonlinear dynamics. The dynamics provide a scheme for realizing a nanomechanical system with tunable frequency and…
The nonlinear dynamics of a one-dimensional molecular crystal in the form of a chain of planar coronene molecules is analyzed. Using molecular dynamics, it is shown that a chain of coronene molecules supports acoustic solitons,…
We propose a simple phenomenological model for describing the conformational dynamics of biopolymers via the nonlinearity-induced buckling and collapse (i.e. coiling up) instabilities. Taking into account the coupling between the internal…
We consider non-stationary localized oscillations of an infinite Bernoulli-Euler beam. The beam lies on the Winkler foundation with a point inhomogeneity (a concentrated spring with negative time-varying stiffness). In such a system with…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
Actomyosin contractility is essential for biological force generation, and is well understood in highly organized structures such as striated muscle. Additionally, actomyosin bundles devoid of this organization are known to contract both in…
The mechanics of cells is strongly affected by molecular motors that generate forces in the cellular cytoskeleton. We develop a model for cytoskeletal networks driven out of equilibrium by molecular motors exerting transient contractile…
For the study of highly nonlinear, conservative dynamic systems, finding special periodic solutions which can be seen as generalization of the well-known normal modes of linear systems is very attractive. However, the study of…
We develop the fundamentals of nonlinear and anisotropic bending behavior of biomimetic scale plates using a combination of analytical modeling, finite element (FE) computations, and motivational experiments. The analytical…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
Microtubules self-organize to form part of the cellular cytoskeleton. They give cells their shape and play a crucial role in cell division and intracellular transport. Strikingly, microtubules driven by motor proteins reorganize into stable…
The propagation of acoustic and elastic waves in time-varying, spatially homogeneous media can exhibit different phenomena when compared to traditional spatially-varying, temporally-homogeneous media. In the present work, the response of a…
Cytoskeletal networks, which are essentially motor-filament assemblies, play a major role in many developmental processes involving structural remodeling and shape changes. These are achieved by nonequilibrium self-organization processes…
We examine kinematic dynamo action driven by an axisymmetric large scale flow that is superimposed with an azimuthally propagating non-axisymmetric perturbation with a frequency $\omega$. Although we apply a rather simple large scale…
We illustrate shape mode analysis as a simple, yet powerful technique to concisely describe complex biological shapes and their dynamics. We characterize undulatory bending waves of beating flagella and reconstruct a limit cycle of…
To develop a minimal model for a cell moving in a crowded environment such as in tissue, we investigate the response of a liquid drop of active matter moving on a flat rigid substrate to forces applied at its boundaries. We consider two…
We model analytically the dynamics of a cytoskeletal filament in a motility assay. The filament is described as rigid rod free to slide in two dimensions. The motor proteins consist of polymeric tails tethered to the plane and modeled as…