Related papers: Why A Large Scale Mode Can Be Essential For Unders…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…
The development of traction-force microscopy, in the past two decades, has created the unprecedented opportunity of performing direct mechanical measurements on living cells as they adhere or crawl on uniform or micro-patterned substrates.…
While mechanobiology has demonstrated that precise control over mechanical properties at the whole-cell level is crucial for many biological functions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the intracellular mechanical properties.…
Understanding the activity of large populations of neurons is difficult due to the combinatorial complexity of possible cell-cell interactions. To reduce the complexity, coarse-graining had been previously applied to experimental neural…
From a coarse-grained perspective the motif of a self-activating species, activating a second species which acts as its own repressor, is widely found in biological systems, in particular in genetic systems with inherent oscillatory…
Intracellular transport of large cargoes, such as organelles, vesicles or large proteins, is a complex dynamical process that involves the interplay of ATP-consuming molecular motors, cytoskeleton filaments and the viscoelastic cytoplasm.…
Pattern formation often occurs in confined systems, yet how boundaries shape patterning dynamics is unclear. We develop techniques to analyze confinement effects in nonlocal advection-diffusion equations, which generically capture the…
The crawling motility of many eukaryotic cells is driven by filamentous actin (F-actin), and regulated by a network of signaling proteins and lipids (including small GTPases). The tangle of positive and negative feedback loops gives rise to…
Contractile forces are essential for many developmental processes involving cell shape change and tissue deformation. Recent experiments on reconstituted actomyosin networks, the major component of the contractile machinery, have shown that…
In this article we give our perspective on the successes and promise of various molecular and coarse-grained simulation approaches to probing the effect of mechanical forces in the actin cytoskeleton.
Migratory and tissue resident cells exhibit highly branched morphologies to perform their function and to adapt to the microenvironment. Immune cells, for example, display transient branched shapes while exploring the surrounding tissues.…
Self-organized pattern formation is vital for many biological processes. Reaction-diffusion models have advanced our understanding of how biological systems develop spatial structures, starting from homogeneity. However, biological…
Motility is an essential factor for an organism's survival and diversification. With the advent of novel single-cell technologies, analytical frameworks and theoretical methods, we can begin to probe the complex lives of microscopic motile…
Cell shape changes, essential for processes such as motility or division, are controlled by the actomyosin cortex that actively remodels biological membranes. Their mechanisms can be deciphered in___vitro using biomimetic reconstituted…
Investigating wave propagation in fluid enables a variety of important applications in underwater communications, object detections and unmanned robot control. Conventionally, momentum and spin reveal fundamental physical properties about…
Cell adhesion, a fundamental process of cell biology is involved in the embryo development and in numerous pathologies especially those related to cancers. We constrained cells to adhere on extracellular matrix proteins patterned in a micro…
Myosin II molecular motors slide actin filaments relatively to each other and are essential for force generation, motility and mechanosensing in animal cells. For non-muscle cells, evolution has resulted in three different isoforms, which…
This work is directed towards investigating the fate of three-dimensional long perturbation waves in a plane incompressible wake. The analysis is posed as an initial-value problem in space. More specifically, input is made at an initial…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
The formation and proliferation of protein aggregates play a central role in a number of devastating neuro-degenerative diseases. Many experimental studies indicate that the ability of existing aggregates to replicate is a key property in…