Related papers: A generic self-stabilization mechanism for biomole…
The notion of `adhesion' has been advanced for the phenomenon of stabilization of large-scale structure emerging from gravitational instability of a cold medium. Recently, the physical origin of adhesion has been identified: a systematic…
Applying a force to certain supramolecular bonds may initially stabilize them, manifested by a lower dissociation rate. We show that this behavior, known as catch bonding and by now broadly reported in numerous biophysics bonds, is…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-network-forming protein in animal biology and is important in both natural and artificial tissues, where it serves as a material of great mechanical versatility. This versatility arises from its…
The relation between network structure and dynamics is determinant for the behavior of complex systems in numerous domains. An important long-standing problem concerns the properties of the networks that optimize the dynamics with respect…
Colloidal particles with mobile binding molecules constitute a powerful platform for probing the physics of self-assembly. Binding molecules are free to diffuse and rearrange on the surface, giving rise to spontaneous control over the…
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.…
The global dynamics of gene regulatory networks are known to show robustness to perturbations in the form of intrinsic and extrinsic noise, as well as mutations of individual genes. One molecular mechanism underlying this robustness has…
Various adhesion mechanisms that have been understood in the field of synthetic adhesives are described and these are linked with situations relevant to fouling issues. The review mainly deals with mechanical aspects of adhesion phenomena,…
We study the model of a molecular switch comprised of a molecule with a soft vibrational degree of freedom coupled to metallic leads. In the presence of strong electron-ion interaction, different charge states of the molecule correspond to…
We consider a microscopic model for the failure of soft adhesives in tension based on ideas of bond rupture under dynamic loading. Focusing on adhesive failure under loading at constant velocity, we demonstrate that bi-modal curves of…
We analyze the effect of an external electric field on the electronic structure of molecules which have been recently studied as molecular wires or diodes. We use a self-consistent tight binding technique which provides results in good…
Analyzing nonlinear conformational relaxation dynamics in elastic networks corresponding to two classical motor proteins, we find that they respond by well-defined internal mechanical motions to various initial deformations and that these…
Trapping macromolecules is impoartant for the study of their conformations, interactions, dynamics and kinetic processes. Here, we develop a variational approach which self-consistently introduces a mean force that controls the…
We discuss the relaxation kinetics of a one-dimensional dimer adsorption model as recently proposed for the binding of biological dimers like kinesin on microtubules. The non-equilibrium dynamics shows several regimes: irreversible…
The goal of this paper is to understand if the property of adaptation, which is a typical property of many biochemical systems, can be achieved only by biological systems that actively consume energy or if it can be achieved also by passive…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
Cell adhesion complexes (CACs), which are activated by ligand binding, play key roles in many cellular functions ranging from cell cycle regulation to mediation of cell extracellular matrix adhesion. Inspired by single molecule pulling…
Cell adhesion proteins typically form stable clusters that anchor the cell membrane to its environment. Several works have suggested that cell membrane protein clusters can emerge from a local feedback between the membrane curvature and the…
Sensory mechanisms in biology, from cells to humans, have the property of adaptivity, whereby the response produced by the sensor is adapted to the overall amplitude of the signal; reducing the sensitivity in the presence of strong…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…