Related papers: Biopolymers: life's mechanical scaffolds
Biological membranes and vesicles play a central role in living systems, forming dynamic interfaces that regulate cellular organization and function. Classical descriptions of membrane mechanics that are rooted in equilibrium statistical…
Mechanics and biochemical signaling are both often deregulated in cancer, leading to cancer cell phenotypes that exhibit increased invasiveness, proliferation, and survival. The dynamics and interactions of cytoskeletal components control…
This article frames the relation between biology and physics by characterizing the former as a subdiscipline rather than a special case of the latter. To do this, we posit biological physics as the science of living matter in contrast to…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental aspects of many living and engineering systems. Here, the scale of biological agents covers a wide range, from nanomotors, cytoskeleton, and cells, to insects, fish, birds, and people. Inspired…
Cells and tissues change shape both to carry out their function and during pathology. In most cases, these deformations are driven from within the systems themselves. This is permitted by a range of molecular actors, such as active…
Cells accomplish diverse functions using the same molecular building blocks, from setting up cytoplasmic flows to generating mechanical forces. In particular, transitions between these non-equilibrium states are triggered by regulating the…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
The present article is an invited contribution to the Encyclopedia of Complexity and System Science, Robert A. Meyers Ed., Springer New York (2009). It is a review of the biophysical mechanisms that underly cell motility. It mainly focuses…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
Unlike most synthetic materials, biological materials often stiffen as they are deformed. This nonlinear elastic response, critical for the physiological function of some tissues, has been documented since at least the 19th century, but the…
The understanding of morphogenesis in living organisms has been renewed by tremendous progressin experimental techniques that provide access to cell-scale, quantitative information both on theshapes of cells within tissues and on the genes…
Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…
Activity and renewability are distinctive features of living matter, and constitute a new class of materials that we term renewable active matter. A striking example is the cell cytoskeleton, where myosin filaments bind to the actin…
Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…
Living materials such as membranes, cytoskeletal assemblies, cell collectives and tissues can often be described as active solids -- materials that are energized from within, with elastic response about a well defined reference…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
The translocation of biopolymers, such as DNA and proteins, across cellular or nuclear membranes is essential for numerous biological processes. The translocation dynamics are influenced by the properties of the polymers, such as polymer…
The global increase in materials consumption calls for innovative materials, with tailored performance and multi-functionality, that are environmentally sustainable. Composites from renewable resources offer solutions to fulfil these…
Eukaryotic cells are mechanically supported by a polymer network called the cytoskeleton, which consumes chemical energy to dynamically remodel its structure. Recent experiments in vivo have revealed that this remodeling occasionally…