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Related papers: Active Segregation Dynamics in the Living Cell

200 papers

Phase separation routinely occurs in both living and synthetic systems. These phases are often complex and distinguished by features including crystallinity, nematic order, and a host of other nonconserved order parameters. For systems at…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-12-08 Daniel Evans , Ahmad K. Omar

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…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-11-17 Matej Krajnc , Tomer Stern , Clement Zankoc

Tissue remodelling in diverse developmental contexts require cell shape changes that have been associated with pulsation and flow of the actomyosin cytoskeleton. Here we describe the dynamics of the actomyosin cytoskeleton as a confined…

Biological Physics · Physics 2016-05-25 Deb Sankar Banerjee , Akankshi Munjal , Thomas Lecuit , Madan Rao

Cell motility is one of the most fundamental phenomena underlying biological processes that maintain living organisms alive. Here we introduce a simple model to describe the motility of cells which include not only time-correlated internal…

Biological Physics · Physics 2022-07-13 T. N. Azevedo , L. G. Rizzi

The cell cortex is a thin layer beneath the plasma membrane that gives animal cells mechanical resistance and drives most of their shape changes, from migration, division to multicellular morphogenesis. It is mainly composed of actin…

Biological Physics · Physics 2022-05-04 Hudson Borja da Rocha , Jérémy Bleyer , Hervé Turlier

Active tissues exhibit tension fluctuations that are correlated in space and time. We study a minimal overdamped surface model in which such fluctuations enter as a zero-mean, multiplicative modulation of the local surface tension. Although…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-02 Matteo Ciarchi , Andriy Goychuk , Erwin Frey

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…

The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…

Cell Behavior · Quantitative Biology 2023-06-02 Yuzhu Chen , David Saintillan , Padmini Rangamani

We investigate proteins within heterogeneous cell membranes where non-equilibrium phenomena arises from spatial variations in concentration and temperature. We develop simulation methods building on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-08-28 D. Jasuja , P. J. Atzberger

Distinguishing active from passive dynamics is a fundamental challenge in understanding the motion of living cells and other active matter systems. Here, we introduce a framework that combines physical modeling, analytical theory, and…

We present a continuum theory of self-propelled particles, without alignment interactions, in a momentum-conserving solvent. To address phase separation we introduce a scalar concentration field $\phi$ with advective-diffusive dynamics.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2015-11-18 Adriano Tiribocchi , Raphael Wittkowski , Davide Marenduzzo , Michael E. Cates

Fluid-structure interactions between active and passive components are important for many biological systems to function. A particular example is chromatin in the cell nucleus, where ATP-powered processes drive coherent motions of the…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-02-15 Scott Weady , David B. Stein , Alexandra Zidovska , Michael J. Shelley

A model of multicellular systems with several types of cells is developed from the phase field model. The model is presented as a set of partial differential equations of the field variables, each of which expresses the shape of one cell.…

Biological Physics · Physics 2015-05-30 Makiko Nonomura

The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2023-01-05 Jen-Yu Lo , Yuan-Heng Tseng , Hsuan-Yi Chen

Active dynamic processes of cells are largely driven by the cytoskeleton, a complex and adaptable semiflexible polymer network, motorized by mechanoenzymes. Small dimensions, confined geome- tries and hierarchical structures make it…

Biological Physics · Physics 2017-08-23 Jannes Gladrow , Chase P. Broedersz , Christoph F. Schmidt

Mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors form active materials with diverse dynamical behaviors that vary based on their constituents' molecular properties. We map the non-equilibrium phase diagram of microtubules and tip-accumulating…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-08-04 Bezia Lemma , Noah P. Mitchell , Radhika Subramanian , Daniel J. Needleman , Zvonimir Dogic

Understanding active matter has led to new perspectives on biophysics and non-equilibrium dynamics. However, the development of numerical tools for simulating active fluids capable of incorporating non-trivial boundaries or inclusions has…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-02-01 Timofey Kozhukhov , Benjamin Loewe , Tyler N. Shendruk

We study a mixture of extensile and contractile cells using a vertex model extended to include active nematic stresses. The two cell populations phase separate over time. While phase separation strengthens monotonically with an increasing…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-10-11 Jan Rozman , Julia M. Yeomans

Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-08-26 Tianxiang Ma , Valeriia Grudtsyna , Robin V. Bölsterli , Amin Doostmohammadi

Liquid-liquid phase separation is emerging as a crucial phenomenon in several fundamental cell processes. A range of eukaryotic systems exhibit liquid condensates. However, their function in bacteria, which in general lack membrane-bound…