Related papers: Understanding cytoskeletal avalanches using mechan…
Active networks made of biopolymers and motor proteins are valuable bioinspired systems that have been used in the last decades to study the cytoskeleton and its self-organization under mechanical stimulation. Different techniques are…
Essentially all biology is active and dynamic. Biological entities autonomously sense, com- pute, and respond using energy-coupled ratchets that can produce force and do work. The cytoskeleton, along with its associated proteins and motors,…
The cytoskeleton is a model active matter system that controls diverse cellular processes from division to motility. While both active actomyosin dynamics and actin-microtubule interactions are key to the cytoskeleton's versatility and…
A self-organising model is proposed to explain the criticality in cortical networks deduced from recent observations of neuronal avalanches. Prevailing understanding of self-organised criticality (SOC) dictates that conservation of energy…
A network of semiflexible biopolymers, known as the cytoskeleton, and molecular motors play fundamental mechanical roles in cellular activities. The cytoskeletal response to forces generated by molecular motors is profoundly linked to…
This Thesis explores how tools from Statistical Physics and Information Theory can help us describe and understand complex systems. In the first part, we study the interplay between internal interactions, environmental changes, and…
The observation of apparent power-laws in neuronal systems has led to the suggestion that the brain is at, or close to, a critical state and may be a self-organised critical system. Within the framework of self-organised criticality a…
Avalanches of electrochemical activity in brain networks have been empirically reported to obey scale-invariant behavior --characterized by power-law distributions up to some upper cut-off-- both in vitro and in vivo. Elucidating whether…
The actomyosin cortex is an active material that provides animal cells with a strong but flexible exterior, whose mechanics, including non-Gaussian fluctuations and occasional large displacements or cytoquakes, have defied explanation. We…
We study the coarsening dynamics of a two dimensional system via lattice Boltzmann numerical simulations. The system under consideration is a biphasic system consisting of domains of a dispersed phase closely packed together in a continuous…
Cytoskeletal motor proteins are involved in major intracellular transport processes which are vital for maintaining appropriate cellular function. The motor exhibits distinct states of motility: active motion along filaments, and…
Living cells exhibit an important out-of-equilibrium mechanical activity, mainly due to the forces generated by molecular motors. These motor proteins, acting individually or collectively on the cytoskeleton, contribute to the violation of…
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a floating lipid bilayer membrane coupled with a two-dimensional cytoskeleton network, taking into explicitly account the intermonolayer friction, the discrete lattice structure of the…
The behavior of granular media under quasi-static loading has recently been shown to attain a stable evolution state corresponding to a manifold in the space of micromechanical variables. This state is characterized by sudden transitions…
The neural networks of the human brain act as very efficient parallel processing computers co-ordinating memory related responses to a multitude of input signals from sensory organs. Information storage, update and appropriate retrieval are…
Spontaneous neuronal activity is a ubiquitous feature of cortex. Its spatiotemporal organization reflects past input and modulates future network output. Here we study whether a particular type of spontaneous activity is generated by a…
We present investigations on volume regulation and beading shape transitions in PC12 neurites conducted using a flow-chamber technique. By disrupting the cell cytoskeleton with specific drugs we investigate the role of its individual…
The macroscopic properties, the properties of individual components and how those components interact with each other are three important aspects of a composited structure. An understanding of the interplay between them is essential in the…
Biological tissues exhibit diverse mechanical and rheological behaviors during morphogenesis. While much is known about tissue phase transitions controlled by structural order and cell mechanics, key questions regarding how tissue-scale…
The mechanical properties of cells are dominated by the cytoskeleton, an interconnected network of long elastic filaments. The connections between the filaments are provided by crosslinking proteins, which constitute, next to the filaments,…