Related papers: Super-Gaussian, super-diffusive transport of multi…
A ubiquitous observation in cell biology is that diffusion of macromolecules and organelles is anomalous, and a description simply based on the conventional diffusion equation with diffusion constants measured in dilute solution fails. This…
Recent advances in human mobility research have revealed consistent pairwise characteristics in movement behavior, yet existing mobility models often overlook the spatial and topological structure of mobility networks. By analyzing millions…
Within living cells, the transport of cargo is accomplished by groups of molecular motors. Such collective transport could utilize mechanisms which emerge from inter-motor interactions in ways that are yet to be fully understood. Here we…
Molecular motion through pores plays a crucial role in various natural and industrial processes. One of the most fascinating features of biological channel-facilitated transport is a stochastic gating process, when the channels dynamically…
We scrutinize the temporally-resolved speed of active cargo transport in living cells, and show intermittent bursting motions. These nonlinear fluctuations follow a scaling law over several decades of time and space, the statistical…
Experimental studies of the diffusion of biomolecules in the environment of biological cells are routinely confronted with multiple sources of stochasticity, whose identification renders the detailed data analysis of single molecule…
The cytoskeleton -- a composite network of biopolymers, molecular motors, and associated binding proteins -- is a paradigmatic example of active matter. Particle transport through the cytoskeleton can range from anomalous and heterogeneous…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…
Motivated by various recent experimental findings, we propose a dynamical model of intermittently self-propelled particles: active particles that recurrently switch between two modes of motion, namely an active run-state and a turn state,…
As society paves its way towards device miniaturization and precision medicine, micro-scale actuation and guided transport become increasingly prominent research fields with high impact in both technological and clinical contexts. In order…
We discuss a theoretical model for bidirectional cargo transport in biological cells, which is driven by teams of molecular motors and subject to thermal fluctuations. The model describes explicitly the directed motion of the molecular…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
Transport of ions and small molecules across the cell membrane against electrochemical gradients is catalyzed by integral membrane proteins that use a source of free energy to drive the energetically uphill flux of the transported…
Power-law dwell times have been observed for molecular motors in living cells, but the origins of these trapped states are not known. We introduce a minimal model of motors moving on a two-dimensional network of filaments, and simulations…
Multiple experiments show that various submicron particles such as magnetosomes, RNA messengers, viruses, and even much smaller nanoparticles such as globular proteins diffuse anomalously slow in viscoelastic cytosol of living cells. Hence,…
Numerous physical models have been proposed to explain how cell motility emerges from internal activity, mostly focused on how crawling motion arises from internal processes. Here we offer a classification of self-propulsion mechanisms…
We develop an agent-based model of the motion and pattern formation of vesicles. These intracellular particles can be found in four different modes of (undirected and directed) motion and can fuse with other vesicles. While the size of…
Cellular tissue behavior is a multiscale problem. At the cell level, out of equilibrium, biochemical reactions drive physical cell-cell interactions in a typical active matter process. Cell modeling computer simulations are a robust tool to…
Cell-to-cell variability is inherent to numerous biological processes, including cell migration. Quantifying and characterizing the variability of migrating cells is challenging, as it requires monitoring many cells for long time windows…