Related papers: Scaling behavior in steady-state contractile actom…
Mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors form active materials with diverse dynamical behaviors that vary based on their constituents' molecular properties. We map the non-equilibrium phase diagram of microtubules and tip-accumulating…
Contractility in animal cells is often generated by molecular motors such as myosin, which require polar substrates for their function. Motivated by recent experimental evidence of motor-independent contractility, we propose a robust…
Cytoplasmic streaming, the coherent flow of cytoplasm, plays a critical role in transport and mixing over large scales in eukaryotic cells. In many large cells, this process is driven by active forces at the cell boundary, such as cortical…
Cytoskeletal filaments transported by surface immobilized molecular motors with one end pinned to the surface have been observed to spiral in a myosin-driven actin 'gliding assay'. The radius of the spiral was shown to scale with motor…
Activity-mediated unjamming of a confluent glassy system is crucial for several biological processes, such as embryogenesis and cancer metastasis. During these processes, the cells progressively change their junction properties,…
The collective action of actively contractile units embedded in elastic biopolymer networks plays a crucial role in regulating the network's macroscopic mechanical response. Here, we investigate how the macroscopic boundary stress in model…
The adaptive and surprising emergent properties of biological materials self-assembled in far-from-equilibrium environments serve as an inspiration for efforts to design nanomaterials and their properties. In particular, controlling the…
Convergent extension of epithelial tissue is a key motif of animal morphogenesis. On a coarse scale, cell motion resembles laminar fluid flow; yet in contrast to a fluid, epithelial cells adhere to each other and maintain the tissue layer…
One of the major challenges of bottom-up synthetic biology is rebuilding a minimal division machinery. The animal cell division apparatus is mechanically the simplest, in which an actin-based ring constricts the membrane, as compared to…
We propose and analyse an active hydrodynamic theory that characterises the effects of the scaffold protein anillin. Anillin is found at major sites of cortical activity, such as adherens junctions and the cytokinetic furrow, where the…
Based on a recently proposed non-equilibrium mechanism for spatial pattern formation [cond-mat/0312366] we study how morphogenesis can be controlled by locally coupled discrete dynamical networks, similar to gene regulation networks of…
Animal cells form contractile structures to promote various functions, from cell motility to cell division. Force generation in these structures is often due to molecular motors such as myosin that require polar substrates for their…
The complexity of the cells can be described and understood by a number of networks such as protein-protein interaction, cytoskeletal, organelle, signalling, gene transcription and metabolic networks. All these networks are highly dynamic…
Cytoskeletal networks are foundational examples of active matter and central to self-organized structures in the cell. In vivo, these networks are active and heavily crosslinked. Relating their large-scale dynamics to properties of their…
The formation of neuron networks is a process of fundamental importance for understanding the development of the nervous system and for creating biomimetic devices for tissue engineering and neural repair. The basic process that controls…
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,…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
The interaction between small- and large-scale structures, and the coexisting bottom-up and top-down processes are studied in a turbulent plane Couette flow, where space-filling longitudinal rolls appear at relatively low values of the…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
Collective cell migration in cohesive units is vital for tissue morphogenesis, wound repair, and immune response. While the fundamental driving forces for collective cell motion stem from contractile and protrusive activities of individual…