Related papers: Sculpting vesicles with active particles: Less is …
In biology, cells undergo deformations under the action of flow caused by the fluid surrounding them. These flows lead to shape changes and instabilities that have been explored in detail for single component vesicles. However, cell…
Hollow microgels are elastic polymer shells easily realizable in experiments. Recent works have shown the emergence of buckling events in dilute hollow microgels under the effect of an added osmotic pressure. Here, we perform large-scale…
Cellular structures must organize themselves within strict physical constraints, operating with finite resources and well-defined boundaries. Classical systems demonstrate only passive responses to boundaries, from surface energy…
We simulate a two dimensional model of self-propelled particles confined by a deformable boundary. The particles tend to accumulate near the boundary and the shape of the boundary deforms upon the collisions. We find that there are two…
The organization of live cells to tissues is associated with the mechanical interaction between cells, which is mediated through their elastic environment. We model cells as spherical active force dipoles surrounded by an infinite elastic…
Cells are fundamental building blocks of living organisms displaying an array of shapes, morphologies, and textures that encode specific functions and physical behaviors. Elucidating the rules of this code remains a challenge. In this work,…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
The shape of a cell influences and it is influenced by interactions with its neighbouring partners. Here, we introduce a coarse-grained model of non-reciprocal interactions between single-cell organisms to study emergent morphologies during…
Droplet formation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatiotemporal organisation of biomolecules in cells. However, classical descriptions of droplet dynamics based on passive liquid-liquid phase separation cannot capture the…
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…
The organization of cells within tissues plays a vital role in various biological processes, including development and morphogenesis. As a result, understanding how cells self-organize in tissues has been an active area of research. In our…
Living organisms have mastered the dynamic control of internal stresses to perform an array of functions, such as change shape and locomote. State-of-the-art attempts to replicate this ability in synthetic materials are rudimentary in…
Morphologies of a vesicle confined in a spherical vesicle were explored experimentally by fast confocal laser microscopy and numerically by a dynamically-triangulated membrane model with area-difference elasticity. The confinement was found…
The biological membrane, which compartmentalizes the cell and its organelles, exhibit wide variety of macroscopic shapes of varying morphology and topology. A systematic understanding of the relation of membrane shapes to composition,…
Computer simulations of coarse-grained molecular models for amphiphilic systems can provide insight into the the structure of amphiphiles at interfaces. They can help to identify the factors that determine the phase behavior, and they can…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
Cells offer numerous inspiring examples where proteins and membranes combine to form complex structures that are key to intracellular compartmentalization, cargo transport, and specialization of cell morphology. Despite this wealth of…
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates with liquid-like properties play a key role in the organization and compartmentalization of the intracellular environment. Condensate-mediated capillary forces acting on membranes drive…