Related papers: Understanding cytoskeletal avalanches using mechan…
The existence of power-law distributions is only a first requirement in the validation of the critical behavior of a system. Long-range spatio-temporal correlations are fundamental for the spontaneous neuronal activity to be the expression…
Dynamic instability in the cytoskeleton underlies a great many vital cellular processes. In neurons, it is thought to play a role in information processing and the establishment of synaptic connections. It is from this interneuronal…
Neuronal avalanches are a novel mode of activity in neuronal networks, experimentally found in vitro and in vivo, and exhibit a robust critical behaviour: These avalanches are characterized by a power law distribution for the size and…
Neuronal avalanches, measured in vitro and in vivo, exhibit a robust critical behaviour. Their temporal organization hides the presence of correlations. Here we present experimental measurements of the waiting time distribution between…
Cytoskeletal gels are prototyped to reproduce the mechanical contraction of the cytoskeleton in-vitro. They are composed of a polymer network (backbone), swollen by the presence of a liquid solvent, and active molecules (molecular motors,…
In small-scale metallic systems, collective dislocation activity has been correlated with size effects in strength and with a step-like plastic response under uniaxial compression and tension. Yielding and plastic flow in these samples is…
The eukaryotic cell's cytoskeleton is a prototypical example of an active material: objects embedded within it are driven by molecular motors acting on the cytoskeleton, leading to anomalous diffusive behavior. Experiments tracking the…
When complex systems are driven to extinction by some external factor, their non-stationary dynamics can present an intermittent behaviour between relative tranquility and burst of activity whose consequences are often catastrophic. To…
Biological forces govern essential cellular and molecular processes in all living organisms. Many cellular forces, e.g. those generated in cyclic conformational changes of biological machines, have repetitive components. However, little is…
Active cell-junction remodeling is important for tissue morphogenesis, yet its underlying physics is not understood. We study a mechanical model that describes junctions as dynamic active force dipoles. Their instability can trigger cell…
Recent experiments on cortical neural networks have revealed the existence of well-defined avalanches of electrical activity. Such avalanches have been claimed to be generically scale-invariant -- i.e. power-law distributed -- with many…
We aim to identify the control principles governing the adaptable formation of non-equilibrium structures in actomyosin networks. We build a phenomenological model and predict that biasing the energy dissipated by molecular motors should…
Molecular-motor generated active stresses drive the cytoskeleton away from equilibrium, endowing it with tunable mechanical properties that are essential for diverse functions such as cell division and motility[1-5]. Designing analogous…
Spontaneous brain activity in the absence of external stimuli is not random but contains complex dynamical structures such as neuronal avalanches with power-law duration and size distributions. These experimental observations have been…
Jammed soft disks exhibit avalanches of particle rearrangements under quasistatic shear. We follow the avalanches using steepest descent to decompose them into individual localized rearrangements. We characterize the local structural…
Autonomous oscillations in biological systems may have a biochemical origin or result from an interplay between force-generating and visco-elastic elements. In molecular motor assemblies the force-generating elements are molecular engines…
Actin is a key component of the cytoskeleton, which plays central roles in cell motility, division, growth, and tensile strength. To enable this wide range of transient mechanical processes and properties, networks of actin filaments…
When external stresses in a system - physical, social or virtual - are relieved through impulsive events, it is natural to focus on the attributes of these avalanches. However, during the quiescent periods in between, stresses may be…
Avalanche dynamics is found in many phenomena spanning from earthquakes to the evolution of species. It can be also found in vortex matter when a type II superconductor is externally driven, for example, by increasing the magnetic field.…
A long standing puzzle in the rheology of living cells is the origin of the experimentally observed long time stress relaxation. The mechanics of the cell is largely dictated by the cytoskeleton, which is a biopolymer network consisting of…