Related papers: Connecting macroscopic dynamics with microscopic p…
How the information microscopically processed by individual neurons is integrated and used in organizing the behavior of an animal is a central question in neuroscience. The coherence of neuronal dynamics over different scales has been…
Robust self-organization of subcellular structures is a key principle governing the dynamics and evolution of cellular life. In fission yeast cells undergoing division, the mitotic spindle spontaneously emerges from the interaction of…
Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…
The purpose of this study was to report numerical validation of a 3D finite element model of contracting muscle. The model was based on continuum theory for fibre-reinforced composite materials. Here we simulated contractions for an…
Networks of elastic beams can deform either by stretching or bending of their members. The primary mode of deformation (bending or stretching) crucially depends on the specific details of the network architecture. In order to shed light on…
Regulating physical size is an essential problem that biological organisms must solve from the subcellular to the organismal scales, but it is not well understood what physical principles and mechanisms organisms use to sense and regulate…
Under many physiological and pathological conditions such as division and migration, cells undergo dramatic deformations, under which their mechanical integrity is supported by cytoskeletal networks (i.e. intermediate filaments, F-actin,…
We study the dynamics of pattern formation in a minimal model for active mixtures made of microtubules and molecular motors. We monitor the evolution of the (conserved) microtubule density and of the (non-conserved) nematic order parameter,…
In this talk we review recent work on integrable models for Microtubule (MT) networks, subneural paracrystalline cytosceletal structures, which seem to play a fundamental role in the neurons. We cast here the complicated MT dynamics in the…
Three problems in the statistical mechanics of models for an assembly of molecular motors interacting with cytoskeletal filaments are reviewed. First, a description of the hydrodynamical behaviour of density-density correlations in…
We investigate the microtubule polymerization dynamics with catastrophe and rescue events for three different confinement scenarios, which mimic typical cellular environments: (i) The microtubule is confined by rigid and fixed walls, (ii)…
Endothelial cells are responsible for the formation of the capillary blood vessel network. We describe a system of endothelial cells by means of two-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations of point-like particles. Cells' motion is…
The cytoskeleton provides eukaryotic cells with mechanical support and helps them perform their biological functions. It is a network of semiflexible polar protein filaments and many accessory proteins that bind to these filaments, regulate…
We propose a theory based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics to describe the mechanical behavior of an active polymer gel created by the inclusion of molecular motors in its solvent. When activated, these motors attach to the chains of the…
Motivated by the formation of ring-like filament structures in the cortex of plant and animal cells, we study the dynamics of a two-dimensional layer of cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins near a surface by a general continuum theory.…
Fibrous networks such as collagen are common in physiological systems. One important function of these networks is to provide mechanical stability for cells and tissues. At physiological levels of connectivity, such networks would be…
The actin cytoskeleton is a key component in the machinery of eukaryotic cells, and it selfassembles out of equilibrium into a wide variety of biologically crucial structures. While the molecular mechanisms involved are well characterized,…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
It is notoriously difficult to predict the behaviour of a complex self-organizing system, where the interactions among dynamical units form a heterogeneous topology. Even if the dynamics of each microscopic unit is known, a real…
The microtubule cytoskeleton is comprised of dynamic, polarized filaments that facilitate transport within the cell. Polarized microtubule arrays are key to facilitating cargo transport in long cells such as neurons. Microtubules also…