Related papers: Fluid pumping and active flexoelectricity can prom…
A theoretical model of a two-component fluid membrane containing lipids and two-state active inclusions is presented. Under strong inclusion activities the membrane can be unstable due to pump-driven undulation or aggregation of high…
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
We analyse a multi-phase field model for an epithelial monolayer with pairwise adhesions between neighbouring cells following an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, representing the stochastic turnover of junctional molecular motors. These…
The formation of microparticles requires the bending of the plasma membrane away from the cytosol. The capcity of the cell membrane to form a microparticle, and the rate of membrane deformation, are controlled by multiple factors, including…
We have studied plasma oscillations in a flux tube created in a dual superconductor. Starting from a static flux tube configuration, with electric charges at either end, we release a fluid of electric charges in the system that accelerate…
We derive the constitutive equations of an active polar gel from a model for the dynamics of elastic molecules that link polar elements. Molecular binding kinetics induces the fluidization of the material, giving rise to Maxwell…
The exchange of mass, momentum and energy between a membrane of liquid crystal and its surroundings of stokesian fluids is added to the dynamic equations of membranes which were deduced from the Ericksen-Leslie's theory of liquid crystals…
Equilibrium self-assembly and conventional materials processing techniques fall far short of mimicking dynamic self-actuating processes that are commonplace throughout biology. To bridge the gap between living and synthetic matter, we study…
Membrane shape fluctuations induce attractive interactions between rigid inclusions. Previous analytical studies showed that the fluctuation-induced pair interactions are rather small compared to thermal energies, but also that multi-body…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
The free energy of inserting a protein into a membrane is determined by considering the variation in the spectrum of thermal fluctuations in response to the presence of a rigid inclusion. Both numerically and through a simple analytical…
Complex interactions between cellular systems and their surrounding extracellular matrices are emerging as important mechanical regulators of cell functions such as proliferation, motility, and cell death, and such cellular systems are…
The assembly of banana-shaped rodlike proteins on membranes, and the associated membrane shape transformations, are investigated by analytical theory and coarse-grained simulations. The membrane-mediated interactions between two…
In the first part of these lecture notes, new high-resolution observations of small-scale magnetic flux concentrations are presented and compared to results from new three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations. Special attention is…
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…
All cells must keep time to consistently perform vital biological functions. To that end, the coupling and interrelatedness of diverse subsecond events in the complex cellular environment, such as protein folding or translation rates,…
Recent studies have revealed the complex structure of nerve signals in axons. There is experimental evidence that the propagation of an electrical signal (action potential) is accompanied by mechanical and thermal effects. In this paper,…
Understanding active matter has led to new perspectives on biophysics and non-equilibrium dynamics. However, the development of numerical tools for simulating active fluids capable of incorporating non-trivial boundaries or inclusions has…
We calculate the fluctuation spectrum of the shape of a lipid vesicle or cell exposed to a nonthermal source of noise. In particular we take into account constraints on the membrane area and the volume of fluid that it encapsulates when…
A phenomenological model on the relationship between viscoelasticity and flexoelectricity is proposed to address the electromechanical coupling under rheological processes in viscoelastic materials. Our theoretical studies show that some…