Related papers: Physics of muscle contraction
Almost 60 years ago Andrew Huxley with his seminal paper \cite{Huxley1957} laid the foundation of modern muscle modeling, linking chemical events to mechanical performance. He described mechanics and energetics of muscle contraction through…
We propose a mechanism of cell motility which is based on contraction and does not require protrusion. The contraction driven translocation of a cell is due to internal flow of the cytoskeleton generated by molecular motors. Each motor…
Regulation of contraction in striated muscle is controlled by a dual mechanism involving both thin filaments containing actin and thick filaments containing myosin. The thin filament is activated by calcium ions binding to troponin, leading…
The study of active solids offers a window into the mechanics and thermodynamics of dense living matter. A key aspect of the non-equilibrium dynamics of such active systems is a mechanistic description of how the underlying mechano-chemical…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
We present a model for the actin contractile ring of adherent animal cells. The model suggests that the actin concentration within the ring and consequently the power that the ring exerts both increase during contraction. We demonstrate the…
We consider mechanically generated molecular braids composed of two molecules where long range interactions between them can be considered to be very weak. We describe a model that takes account of the thermal fluctuations of the braid,…
The emergence of a body axis is a fundamental step in the development of multicellular organisms. In simple systems such as $\textit{Hydra}$, growing evidence suggests that mechanical forces generated by collective cellular activity play a…
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…
Self-assembly and force generation are two central processes in biological systems that usually are considered in separation. However, the signals that activate non-muscle myosin II molecular motors simultaneously lead to self-assembly into…
The motility of certain gram-negative bacteria is mediated by retraction of type IV pili surface filaments, which are essential for infectivity. The retraction is powered by a strong molecular motor protein, PilT, producing very high forces…
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Actin and myosin drive many instances of force generation, deformation, and shape change in cells, tissues, and organisms. In particular, cytoskeletal actomyosin is remarkable in its adaptive architecture, responding to a host of…
The actomyosin cytoskeleton, a protein assembly comprising actin fibers and the myosin molecular motor, drives various cellular dynamics through contractile force generation at high densities. However, the relationship between the density…
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…
Substrate-based cell motility is essential for fundamental biological processes, such as tissue growth, wound healing and immune response. Even if a comprehensive understanding of this motility mode remains elusive, progress has been…
In this paper, we introduce a three-dimensional mathematical model of collagen contraction with microbuckling based on the two-dimensional model previously developed by the authors. The model both qualitatively and quantitatively replicates…
In this work, we study in detail the distribution of stochastic forces generated by the molecular motors activity, in the actin cortex of pre-muscular cells. By combining active and passive rheology experiments, performed on the same…