Related papers: Nonlinear dynamics and fluctuations in biological …
Experimental studies have demonstrated that spermatozoa synchronize their flagella when swimming in close proximity. In a Newtonian fluid, it was shown theoretically that such synchronization arises passively due to hydrodynamic forces…
Synchronization plays a crucial role in the dynamics of living organisms, from fireflies flashing in unison to pacemaker cells that jointly generate heartbeats. Uncovering the mechanism behind these phenomena requires an understanding of…
In a fluid environment, flagellated microswimmers propel themselves by rotating their flagella. The morphology of these flagella significantly influences forward speed, swimming efficiency, and directional stability, which are critical for…
We measure different contributions to entropy production in a living functional epithelial tissue. We do this by extracting the functional dynamics of development while at the same time quantifying fluctuations. Using the translucent…
Spermatozoa flagella are known to synchronize when swimming in close proximity. We use a model consisting of two-dimensional sheets propagating transverse waves of displacement to demonstrate that fluid forces lead to such synchronization…
Elastic confinements are an important component of many biological systems and dictate the transport properties of suspended particles under flow. In this chapter, we review the Brownian motion of a particle moving in the vicinity of a…
Cell signaling, gene expression, and metabolism are affected by cell-cell heterogeneity and random changes in the environment. The effects of such fluctuations on cell signaling and gene expression have recently been studied intensively…
Many active fluid systems encountered in biology are set in total geometric confinement. Cytoplasmic streaming in plant cells is a prominent and ubiquitous example, in which cargo-carrying molecular motors move along polymer filaments and…
Cellular locomotion often involves the motion of thin, elastic filaments, such as cilia and flagella, in viscous environments. The manuscript serves as a general introduction to the topic of modelling microscale elastohydrodynamics. We…
Myosin motor proteins drive vigorous steady-state fluctuations in the actin cytoskeleton of cells. Endogenous embedded semiflexible filaments such as microtubules, or added filaments such as single-walled carbon nanotubes are used as novel…
Despite widespread and striking examples of physiological oscillations, their functional role is often unclear. Even glycolysis, the paradigm example of oscillatory biochemistry, has seen questions about its oscillatory function. Here, we…
Green algae of the $Volvocine$ lineage, spanning from unicellular $Chlamydomonas$ to vastly larger $Volvox$, are models for the study of the evolution of multicellularity, flagellar dynamics, and developmental processes. Phototactic…
In this paper, we bring together our efforts in identifying and understanding nonequilibrium phase segregation driven by active processes in the living cell, with special focus on the segregation of cell membrane components driven by active…
Rapid transduction of sensory stimulation to action is essential for an animal to survive. To this end, most animals use the sub-second excitable and multistable dynamics of a neuromuscular system. Here, studying an animal without neurons…
We present initial results regarding the existence, stability and interaction of linear and nonlinear vibrational modes in a system of two coupled, one dimensional lattices with unequal numbers of masses. The effects on these nonlinear…
Some biological systems operate at the critical point between stability and instability and this requires a fine-tuning of parameters. We bring together two examples from the literature that illustrate this: neural integration in the…
The main subject of this thesis rests on the study ---at different levels of description--- of instabilities in systems which are driven, i.e., maintained far from equilibrium by an external forcing. We focus here on two main classes,…
Cilia and flagella are self-actuated microtubule-based structures that are present on many cell surfaces, ranging from the outer surface of single-cell organisms to the internal epithelial surfaces in larger animals. A fast and robust…
The mechanics of crawling cells on a substrate is investigated by using a minimal model that satisfies the force-free condition. A cell is described by two subcellular elements connected by a linear actuator that changes the length of the…
Active contributions to fluctuations are a direct consequence of metabolic energy consumption in living cells. Such metabolic processes continuously create active forces, which deform the membrane to control motility, proliferation as well…