Related papers: Fluid pumping and active flexoelectricity can prom…
Biomembranes wrapping cells and organelles are not only the partitions that separate the insides but also dynamic fields for biological functions accompanied by membrane shape changes. In this review, we discuss the spatiotemporal patterns…
Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…
We show that the formation of membrane tubes (or membrane tethers), which is a crucial step in many biological processes, is highly non-trivial and involves first order shape transitions. The force exerted by an emerging tube is a…
The process of fission and vesicle formation depends on the geometry of the membrane that will split. For instance, a flat surface finds it difficult to form vesicles because of the lack of curved regions where to start the process. Here we…
Tissue fluidity regulates many critical biological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. In confluent epithelia, where cell packing fraction is effectively fixed, the prevailing paradigm…
Biological systems achieve precise control over ambient fluids through the self-organization of active protein structures including flagella, cilia, and cytoskeletal networks. In active structures individual proteins consume chemical energy…
Understanding and manipulating the interactions between foreign bodies and cell membranes during endo- and phagocytosis is of paramount importance, not only for the fate of living cells but also for numerous biomedical applications. This…
The glassy cytoplasm, crowded with bio-macromolecules, is fluidized in living cells by mechanical energy derived from metabolism. Characterizing the living cytoplasm as a non-equilibrium system is crucial in elucidating the intricate…
How can a collection of motile cells, each generating contractile nematic stresses in isolation, become an extensile nematic at the tissue-level? Understanding this seemingly contradictory experimental observation, which occurs irrespective…
Membrane tubes (spicules) arise in cells, or artificial membranes, in the nonlinear deformation regime due to, e.g. the growth of microtubules, actin filaments or sickle hemoglobin fibers towards a membrane. We calculate the axial force…
The flocculation of liposomes is theoretically studied. An expression for the flocculation activation energy is derived, accounting for the electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions as well as for the correlation area of floc-spots.
We identify a class of composite membranes: fluid bilayers coupled to an elastic meshwork, that are such that the meshwork's energy is a function $F_\mathrm{el}[A_\xi]$ \textit{not} of the real microscopic membrane area $A$, but of a…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of…
Active emulsions and liquid crystalline shells are intriguing and experimentally realisable types of topological matter. Here we numerically study the morphology and spatiotemporal dynamics of a double emulsion, where one or two passive…
We study the non-equilibrium dynamics of lipid membranes with proteins that actively pump ions across the membrane. We find that the activity leads to a fluctuating force distribution due to electrostatic interactions arising from variation…
The spontaneous emergence of contraction-inducing electrical activity in the uterus at the beginning of labor remains poorly understood, partly due to the seemingly contradictory observation that isolated uterine cells are not spontaneously…
We present a general dynamical theory of a membrane coupled to an actin cortex containing polymerizing filaments with active stresses and currents, and demonstrate that active membrane dynamics [Phys. Rev. Lett \textbf{84}, 3494 (2000)] and…
The world of nanoscales in fluidics is the frontier where the continuum of fluid mechanics meets the atomic, and even quantum, nature of matter. While water dynamics remains largely classical under extreme confinement, several experiments…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…