Related papers: The Physics of Self-Rolling Viruses
The dynamics of one and two identical spheres rolling in a nearly-levitating upflow of air obey the Langevin Equation and the Fluctuation-Dissipation Relation [Ojha et al. Nature 427, 521 (2004) and Phys. Rev. E 71, 01631 (2005)]. To probe…
The origin of biological motion can be traced back to the function of molecular motor proteins. Cytoplasmic dynein and kinesin transport organelles within our cells moving along a polymeric filament, the microtubule. The motion of the…
The Caspar-Klug classification of viruses whose protein shell, called viral capsid, exhibits icosahedral symmetry, has recently been extended to incorporate viruses whose capsid proteins are exclusively organised in pentamers. The approach,…
Self-assembly at submicroscopic scales is an important but little understood phenomenon. A prominent example is virus capsid growth, whose underlying behavior can be modeled using simple particles that assemble into polyhedral shells.…
We study the motion of a particle sliding under the action of an external field on a stochastically fluctuating one-dimensional Edwards-Wilkinson surface. Numerical simulations using the single-step model shows that the mean-square…
Using a tight-binding atomistic simulation, we simulate the recent atomic-force microscopy experiments probing the slipperiness of graphene flakes made slide against a graphite surface. Compared to previous theoretical models, where the…
The coat proteins of many viruses spontaneously form icosahedral capsids around nucleic acids or other polymers. Elucidating the role of the packaged polymer in capsid formation could promote biomedical efforts to block viral replication…
The early stages of drop impact onto a solid surface are considered. Detailed numerical simulations and detailed asymptotic analysis of the process reveal a self-similar structure both for the velocity field and the pressure field. The…
The rolling motion of a rigid cylinder on an inclined flat viscous surface is investigated and the nonlinear resistance force against rolling, $F_R(v)$, is derived. For small velocities $F_R(v)$ increases with velocity due to increasing…
The mobility of particles in fluid membranes is a fundamental aspect of many biological processes. In a 1975 paper [1], Saffman and Delbr\"uck demonstrated how the presence of external Stokesian solvents is crucial in regularising the…
The depletion interaction mediated by non-adsorbing polymers promotes condensation and assembly of repulsive colloidal particles into diverse higher-order structures and materials. One example, with particularly rich emergent behaviors, is…
We describe a new kind of self-propelling motion of bacteria based on the cooperative action of rotating flagella on the surface of bacteria. Describing the ensemble of rotating flagella in the framework of the hydrodynamics with spin the…
The dynamics of the discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal deposited on a disordered substrate is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. The mobility of the growing surface was studied as a function of a small driving force…
A novel mechanism of reaction-induced active molecular motion, not involving any kind of self-propulsion, is proposed and analyzed. Because of the momentum exchange with the surrounding solvent, conformational transitions in…
We examine a mechanism of locomotion of active particles whose surface is uniformly coated with mobile enzymes. The enzymes catalyze a reaction that drives phoretic flows but their homogeneous distribution forbids locomotion by symmetry. We…
We consider self-propelled particles undergoing run-and-tumble dynamics (as exhibited by E. coli) in one dimension. Building on previous analyses at drift-diffusion level for the one-particle density, we add both interactions and noise,…
Overdamped Brownian motion of a self-propelled particle is studied by solving the Langevin equation analytically. On top of translational and rotational diffusion, in the context of the presented model, the "active" particle is driven along…
The dynamics of a "peeling front" or an elastic line is studied under creep (constant load) conditions. Our experiments show an exponential dependence of the creep velocity on the inverse force (mass) applied. In particular, the dynamical…
We study the motion of a two-dimensional droplet on an inclined surface, under the action of gravity, using a diffuse interface model which allows for arbitrary equilibrium contact angles. The kinematics of motion is analysed by decomposing…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…