Related papers: Towards the cellular-scale simulation of motor-dri…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Developing tissues need to pattern themselves in space and time. A prevalent mechanism to achieve this are pulsatile active stresses generated by the actin cytoskeleton. Active gel theory is a powerful tool to model the dynamics of…
Active gels made of cytoskeletal proteins are valuable materials with attractive non-equilibrium properties such as spatial self-organization and self-propulsion. At least four typical routes to spatial patterning have been reported to date…
Nonlinearities and instabilities in mechanical structures have shown great promise for embedding advanced functionalities. However, simulating structures subject to nonlinearities can be challenging due to the complexity of their behavior,…
Enzymatic molecules that actively support many cellular processes, including transport, cell division and cell motility, are known as motor proteins or molecular motors. Experimental studies indicate that they interact with each other and…
The rheology of biological cells is not only determined by their cytoskeletal networks, but also by the molecular motors that crosslink and contract them. Recently it has been found that the assemblies of myosin II molecular motors in…
The actin cytoskeleton is remarkably adaptable and multifunctional. It often organizes into nematic bundles such as contractile rings or stress fibers. However, how a uniform and isotropic actin gel self-organizes into dense nematic bundles…
Cells control fluid flows with a spatial and temporal precision that far exceeds the capabilities of current microfluidic technologies. Cells achieve this superior spatio-temporal control by harnessing dynamic networks of cytoskeleton and…
Cytoskeletal networks form complex intracellular structures. Here we investigate a minimal model for filament-motor mixtures in which motors act as depolymerases and thereby regulate filament length. Combining agent-based simulations and…
The cellular cytoskeleton is an active material, driven out of equilibrium by molecular motor proteins. It is not understood how the collective behaviors of cytoskeletal networks emerge from the properties of the network's constituent motor…
We introduce a multi-species lattice gas model for motor protein driven collective cargo transport on cellular filaments. We use this model to describe and analyze the collective motion of interacting vesicle cargoes being carried by…
Networks of filamentous proteins play a crucial role in cell mechanics. These cytoskeletal networks, together with various crosslinking and other associated proteins largely determine the (visco)elastic response of cells. In this letter we…
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.
Cells and tissues exert forces and can actively change shape. This strikingly autonomous behavior is powered by the cytoskeleton, which includes an active gel of actin filaments, crosslinks, and myosin molecular motors. Although individual…
In multicellular systems, adhesion complexes, such as those composed of E-cadherin and associated catenins, mechanically couple neighboring cells by directly linking their actin-based cytoskeletal assemblies. However, the mechanics of how…
Dynamically crosslinked semiflexible biopolymers such as the actin cytoskeleton govern the mechanical behavior of living cells. Semiflexible biopolymers nonlinearly stiffen in response to mechanical loads, whereas the crosslinker dynamics…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
We describe a combination of all-atom simulations with CABS, a well-established coarse-grained protein modeling tool, into a single multiscale protocol. The simulation method has been tested on the C-terminal beta hairpin of protein G, a…
In many organisms, cell division is driven by the constriction of a cytokinetic ring, which consists of actin filaments and crosslinking proteins. While it has long been believed that the constriction is driven by motor proteins, it has…
The formation, maintenance and reorganization of the cytoskeletal filament network is essential for a number of cellular processes. While the crucial role played by active forces generated by motor proteins has been studied extensively,…