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Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
Mechanically induced folding of passive cross-linkers is a fundamental biological phenomenon. A typical example is a conformational change in myosin II responsible for the power-stroke in skeletal muscles. In this paper we present an…
Macroscopic sliding between two solids is triggered by the propagation of a micro-slip front along the frictional interface. In certain conditions, sliding is preceded by the propagation of aborted fronts, spanning only part of the contact…
We study protein diffusion in multicomponent lipid membranes close to a rigid substrate separated by a layer of viscous fluid. The large-distance, long-time asymptotics for Brownian motion are calculated using a nonlinear stochastic…
The organization of the axonal cytoskeleton is a key determinant of the normal function of an axon, which is a long thin projection away from a neuron. Under normal conditions two axonal cytoskeletal polymers microtubules and neurofilaments…
A crossover between two mechanisms destabilizing the magnetization in equilibrium by the spin transfer effect is found in a ferromagnetic multilayer consisting of an in-plane magnetized free layer and a perpendicularly magnetized pinned…
The diffusion of small molecular penetrants through polymeric materials represents an important fundamental problem, relevant to the design of materials for applications such as coatings and membranes. Polymer networks hold promise in these…
Using molecular dynamics we study the dependence of the friction force on the sliding speed when an elastic slab (block) is sliding on a rigid substrate with a ${\rm sin} (q_0 x)$ surface height profile. The friction force is nearly…
The fate of every eukaryotic cell subtly relies on the exceptional mechanical properties of microtubules. Despite significant efforts, understanding their unusual mechanics remains elusive. One persistent, unresolved mystery is the…
The dynamics of a neural model for hippocampal place cells storing spatial maps is studied. In the absence of external input, depending on the number of cells and on the values of control parameters (number of environments stored, level of…
The migration of active particles in slowly moving, crowded, and heterogeneous media is fundamental to various biological processes and technological applications, such as cargo transport. In this study, we numerically investigate the…
Precise positioning of the mitotic spindle is important for specifying the plane of cell division, which in turn determines how the cytoplasmic contents are partitioned into the daughter cells, and how the daughters are positioned within…
Here we study a driven lattice gas model for microtubule depolymerizing molecular motors, where traffic jams of motors induce stochastic switching between microtubule growth and shrinkage. We term this phenomenon \enquote{traffic dynamic…
The composite cytoskeleton, comprising interacting networks of semiflexible actin and rigid microtubules, actively generates forces and restructures using motor proteins such as myosins to enable key mechanical processes including cell…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
We present a minimal quasistatic 1D model describing the kinematics of the transition from static friction to stick-slip motion of a linear elastic block on a rigid plane. We show how the kinematics of both the precursors to frictional…
The migration of cells through tight constricting spaces or along fibrous tracks in tissues is important for biological processes, such as embryogenesis, wound healing, and cancer metastasis, and depends on the mechanical properties of the…
It was recently discovered that friction between surfaces bearing phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipid bilayers can be increased by two orders of magnitude or more via an externally-applied electric field, and that this increase is fully…
In this work we investigate the interplay between gravity and turbulence at different spatial scales and in different density regimes. We analyze a sample of 70 $\mu$m quiet clumps that are divided into three surface density bins and we…
Lipid bilayer membranes are the fundamental biological barriers that permit life. The bilayer dynamics largely participates in orchestrating cellular workings and is characterized by substantial stability together with extreme plasticity…