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Bacteria on surfaces exhibit collective behaviors, such as active turbulence and active stresses, which result from their motility, growth, and interactions with their local surroundings. However, interfacial deformations on soft surfaces…
Microtubules are stiff filamentary proteins that constitute an important component of the cytoskeleton of cells. These are known to exhibit a dynamic instability. A steadily growing microtubule can suddenly start depolymerizing very…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
Building on the striking similarity between the structure of the spindle during mitosis in living cells and nematic textures in confined liquid crystals, we use a continuum model of two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal droplets, to…
We investigate the descent of a single droplet on a vertical fiber and its role in generating additional droplets. As the droplet slides, it deposits a non-uniform liquid film whose thickness decreases along the fiber. The thicker portion…
In living cells, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), such as FUS and DDX4, undergo phase separation, forming biomolecular condensates. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate their behavior in their respective homogenous…
The Rayleigh-Plateau instability occurs when surface tension makes a fluid column become unstable to small perturbations. At nanometer scales, thermal fluctuations are comparable to surface energy densities. Consequently, at these scales,…
Biomolecules, such as proteins and RNAs, can phase separate in the cytoplasm of cells to form biomolecular condensates. Such condensates are liquid-like droplets that can wet biological surfaces such as membranes. Many molecules that…
We investigate the kinetics of normal phase nucleation and flux line condensation in the type-II superconductors by numerical study of the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation. We have shown that under the sufficient transport current…
Plasma membrane tubes are ubiquitous in cellular membranes and in the membranes of intracellular organelles. They play crucial roles in trafficking, ion transport, and cellular motility. The formation of plasma membrane tubes can be due to…
Growing experimental evidence indicates that topological defects could serve as organizing centers in the morphogenesis of tissues. Here, we provide a quantitative explanation for this phenomenon, rooted in the buckling theory of deformable…
Spindles are self-organized microtubule-based structures that segregate chromosomes during cell division. The mass of the spindle is controlled by the balance between microtubule turnover and nucleation. The mechanisms that control the…
Microtubules (MTs) are cytoplasmic protein polymers that are essential for fundamental cellular processes including the maintenance of cell shape, organelle transport and formation of the mitotic spindle. Microtubule dynamic instability is…
At the end of the 19th century, Rayleigh and Plateau explained the physical principle behind the fragmentation of a liquid jet into regular droplets commonly observed in everyday life from a faucet. The classical Rayleigh-Plateau…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is an important mechanism for compartmentalizing the cell's cytoplasm, allowing the dynamic organization of the components necessary for survival. However, it is not clear how phase separation is affected by…
Biomolecular condensates are formed via liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins, often together with nucleic acids, typically driven by interactions between low-affinity binding sites. The computational study of such condensates that…
Recent experimental results have shown that vibro-fluidized, binary granular materials exhibit Rayleigh-Taylor-like instabilities that manifest themselves in rising plumes, rising bubbles and the sinking and splitting of granular droplets.…
Microtubules self-organize to form part of the cellular cytoskeleton. They give cells their shape and play a crucial role in cell division and intracellular transport. Strikingly, microtubules driven by motor proteins reorganize into stable…
Cellular rearrangements, as primary sources of tissue fluidization, facilitate topological transitions during tissue morphogenesis. We study the role of intrinsic cell properties such as cell polarity and cell-cell adhesion in shaping…
In living cells, proteins involved in specialized biochemical functions are often spatially organized within biomolecular condensates. Increasing evidence suggests that some of these condensates, including DNA repair condensates, emerge…