Related papers: Functionality of disorder in muscle mechanics

Self-organized bistability (SOB) is the counterpart of 'self-organized criticality' (SOC), for systems tuning themselves to the edge of bistability of a discontinuous phase transition, rather than to the critical point of a continuous one.…

A field-theoretical description of the behavior of homogeneous, elastically isotropic, compressible systems characterized by two order parameters at the bicritical and tetracritical points is presented. For three-dimensional Ising-like…

Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…

Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…

Earlier work on dynamical critical phenomena in the context of magnetic hysteresis for uniaxial (scalar) spins, is extended to the case of a multicomponent (vector) field. From symmetry arguments and a perturbative renormalization group…

The bending of cilia and flagella is driven by forces generated by dynein motor proteins. These forces slide adjacent microtubule doublets within the axoneme, the motile cytoskeletal structure. To create regular, oscilla- tory beating…

Humans and other animals coactivate agonist and antagonist muscles in many motor actions. Increases in muscle coactivation are thought to leverage viscoelastic properties of skeletal muscles to provide resistance against limb motion.…

Bifurcation of an elastic structure crucially depends on the curvature of the constraints against which the ends of the structure are prescribed to move, an effect which deserves more attention than it has received so far. In fact, we show…

We study spatiotemporal chaos in two-dimensional dense active suspensions using a generalized hydrodynamic model. Increasing activity induces a structural transition marked by the formation of intense vortices and giant number fluctuations…

While cracking is a complex dynamics that involves material intrinsic properties like grain shape and size distribution, elastic properties of grain and cementing materials, and extrinsic properties of loading, in this work, the focus has…

Active gels made of cytoskeletal proteins are valuable materials with attractive non-equilibrium properties such as spatial self-organization and self-propulsion. At least four typical routes to spatial patterning have been reported to date…

Disordered biopolymer gels have striking mechanical properties including strong nonlinearities. In the case of athermal gels (such as collagen-I) the nonlinearity has long been associated with a crossover from a bending dominated to a…

In two-dimensional tissues, such as developing germ layers, pair-wise forces (or active stresses) arise from the contractile activity of the cytoskeleton, with dissipation provided by the three-dimensional surroundings. We show analytically…

A thin flat rectangular plate supported on its edges and subjected to in-plane loading exhibits stable post-buckling behaviour. However, the introduction of a nonlinear (softening) elastic foundation may cause the response to become…

Controllability and observability have long been recognized as fundamental structural properties of dynamical systems, but have recently seen renewed interest in the context of large, complex networks of dynamical systems. A basic problem…

Compliant environments can mediate interactions between mechanically active cells like fibroblasts. Starting with a phenomenological model for the behaviour of single cells, we use extensive Monte Carlo simulations to predict non-trivial…

Mechanical coupling between a cell and substrate relies on focal adhesions, clusters of adhesion proteins linking stress fibers (bundles of actin proteins) inside the cell with surrounding tissue. Focal adhesions have been demonstrated to…

The phase behavior of charged rods in the presence of inter-rod linkers is studied theoretically as a model for the equilibrium behavior underlying the organization of actin filaments by linker proteins in the cytoskeleton. The presence of…

Recent experiments in various cell types have shown that two-dimensional tissues often display local nematic order, with evidence of extensile stresses manifest in the dynamics of topological defects. Using a mesoscopic model where tissue…

Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…