Related papers: Bistability and oscillations in cooperative microt…
The proper positioning of the mitotic spindle is crucial for asymmetric cell division and generating cell diversity during development. Proper position in the single-cell embryo of Caenorhabditis elegans is achieved initially by the…
Bidirectional variants of stochastic many particle models for transport by molecular motors show a strong tendency to form macroscopic clusters on static lattices. Inspired by the fact that the microscopic tracks for molecular motors are…
The proper functioning of multicellular organisms requires the robust establishment of precise proportions between distinct cell-types. This developmental differentiation process typically involves intracellular regulatory and stochastic…
We investigate stall force and polymerization kinetics of rigid protofilaments in a microtubule or interacting filaments in bundles under an external load force in the framework of a discrete growth model. We introduce the concecpt of…
We examine the equilibrium and stability of an elastocapillary system to model drying-induced structural failures. The model comprises a circular elastic membrane with a hole at the center that is deformed by the capillary pressure of…
The impact of confinement on self-assembly of particles interacting with short-range attraction and long-range repulsion (SALR) potential is studied for thermodynamic states corresponding to local ordering of clusters or layers in the bulk.…
Within cells, vesicles and proteins are actively transported several micrometers along the cytoskeletal filaments. The transport along microtubules is propelled by dynein and kinesin motors, which carry the cargo in opposite directions.…
An aster of microtubules is a set of flexible polar filaments with dynamic plus-ends, which irradiate from a common location at which the minus ends of the filaments are found. Processive soluble oligomeric motor complexes can bind…
A simple one-dimensional lattice model is suggested to describe the experimentally observed plateau in force-stretching diagrams for some macromolecules. This chain model involves the nearest-neighbor interaction of a Morse-like potential…
The centrosomal aster is a mobile cellular organelle that exerts and transmits forces necessary for nuclear migration and spindle positioning. Recent experimental and theoretical studies of nematode and human cells demonstrate that pulling…
Instability of stratified multi-phase flow in a rotating platform becomes important because of a potential role in micro-mixing and micro-machines. Centrifugal actuation can play an important role in driving the flow and Coriolis force can…
Memories are stored, at least partly, as patterns of strong synapses. Given molecular turnover, how can synapses maintain strong for the years that memories can persist? Some models postulate that biochemical bistability maintains strong…
Biological activity gives rise to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the cytoplasm of cells; however, there are few methods to directly measure these fluctuations. Using a reconstituted actin cytoskeleton, we show that the bending dynamics of…
We study the drift of suspended micro-particles in a viscous liquid pumped back and forth through a periodic lattice of pores (drift ratchet). In order to explain the particle drift observed in such an experiment, we present an…
Polymerization of microtubules is ubiquitous in biological cells and under certain conditions it becomes oscillatory in time. Here simple reaction models are analyzed that capture such oscillations as well as the length distribution of…
In the past fifteen years, flow instabilities reminiscent of the Taylor-like instabilities driven by hoop stresses, have been observed in wormlike micelles based on surfactant molecules. In particular, purely elastic instabilities and…
Cracks, the major vehicle for material failure, tend to accelerate to high velocities in brittle materials. In three-dimensions, cracks generically undergo a micro-branching instability at about 40% of their sonic limiting velocity. Recent…
We explain optical and mirrors displacement bistability in a hybrid optomechanical system in the presence of a strong laser driving field and a weak probe field. External modulating fields are applied selectively on movable mirrors. We show…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
Microtubules (MTs) represent basic components of a cytoskeleton. The present work studies nonlinear dynamics of MTs assuming tangential oscillations of the dimers. We introduce a two component model and show that the dynamics of MTs can be…