Related papers: Sculpting vesicles with active particles: Less is …
Active particles contain internal degrees of freedom with the ability to take in and dissipate energy and, in the process, execute systematic movement. Examples include all living organisms and their motile constituents such as molecular…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
The morphology of spherically confined flexoelectric fluid membrane vesicles in an external uniform electric field is studied numerically. Due to the deformations induced by the confinement, the membrane becomes polarized resulting in an…
Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elongated microscopic constituents that collectively align while…
The vertex model is widely used to describe the dynamics of epithelial tissues, because of its simplicity and versatility and the direct inclusion of biophysical parameters. Here, it is shown that quite generally, when cells modify their…
To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…
When considering flows in biological membranes, they are usually treated as flat, though more often than not, they are curved surfaces, even extremely curved, as in the case of the endoplasmic reticulum. Here, we study the topological…
We demonstrate with experiments and simulations how microscopic self-propelled particles navigate through environments presenting complex spatial features, which mimic the conditions inside cells, living organisms and future lab-on-a-chip…
These lecture notes are designed to provide a brief introduction into the phenomenology of active matter and to present some of the analytical tools used to rationalize the emergent behavior of active systems. Such systems are made of…
Active matter systems such as eukaryotic cells and bacteria continuously transform chemical energy to motion. Hence living systems exert active stresses on the complex environments in which they reside. One recurring aspect of this…
A phase field model for dealing with shape instabilities in fluid membrane vesicles is presented. This model takes into account the Canham-Helfrich bending energy with spontaneous curvature. A dynamic equation for the phase-field is also…
Deformations of cell sheets during morphogenesis are driven by developmental processes such as cell division and cell shape changes. In morphoelastic shell theories of development, these processes appear as variations of the intrinsic…
We study the behaviour of interacting self-propelled particles, whose self-propulsion speed decreases with their local density. By combining direct simulations of the microscopic model with an analysis of the hydrodynamic equations obtained…
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…
Nowadays, multiscale modelling is recognized as the most suitable way to study biological processes. Indeed, almost every phenomenon in nature exhibits a multiscale behaviour, i.e., it is the outcome of interactions that occur at different…
I show the assumed Bilayer structure of cell membranes is Topologically falsified by known aminophospholipid dynamics in metabolically-active, Far from Equilibrium cells. The sensitivity of lipid and cytoplasmic flows to temperature,…
In this paper, phase field models are developed for multi-component vesicle membranes with different lipid compositions and membranes with free boundary. These models are used to simulate the deformation of membranes under the elastic…
The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…
The wrapping of particles and vesicles by lipid bilayer membranes is a fundamental process in cellular transport and targeted drug delivery. Here, we investigate the wrapping behavior of nonspherical vesicles, such as ellipsoidal, prolate,…
The reproduction of a living cell requires a repeatable set of chemical events to be properly coordinated. Such events define a replication cycle, coupling the growth and shape change of the cell membrane with internal metabolic reactions.…