Related papers: Mechanics of diffusion-mediated budding and implic…

The appearance of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in late 2019 has dominated the news in the last few months as it developed into a pandemic. In many mathematics and physics classrooms, instructors are using the time series of the number of…

In cell membranes, proteins and lipids diffuse in a highly crowded and heterogeneous landscape, where aggregates and dense domains of proteins or lipids obstruct the path of diffusing molecules. In general, hindered motion gives rise to…

In living cells, proteins combine 3D bulk diffusion and 1D sliding along the DNA to reach a target faster. This process is known as facilitated diffusion, and we investigate its dynamics in the physiologically relevant case of confined DNA.…

Organisms across all domains of life regulate the size of their cells. However, the means by which this is done is poorly understood. We study two abstracted "molecular" models for size regulation: inhibitor dilution and initiator…

A packed community of exponentially proliferating microbes will spread in size exponentially. However, due to nutrient depletion, mechanical constraints, or other limitations, exponential proliferation is not indefinite, and the spreading…

We introduce two 2D mechanical models reproducing the evolution of two viscous tissues in contact. Their main property is to model the swirling cell motions while keeping the tissues segregated, as observed during vertebrate embryo…

We propose enforcing constraints on Model-Based Diffusion by introducing emerging barrier functions inspired by interior point methods. We demonstrate that the standard Model-Based Diffusion algorithm can lead to catastrophic performance…

The present study focuses on the receptor driven endocytosis typical of viral entry into a cell. A locally increased density of receptors at the time of contact between the cell and the virus is necessary in this case. The virus is…

While small single stranded viral shells encapsidate their genome spontaneously, many large viruses, such as the Herpes virus or Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV), typically require a template, consisting of either scaffolding proteins…

We review the theoretical analyses and simulations of the interactions between curvature-inducing proteins and biomembranes. Laterally isotropic proteins induce spherical budding, whereas anisotropic proteins, such as Bin/Amphiphysin/Rvs…

HIV-1 can disseminate between susceptible cells by two mechanisms: cell-free infection following fluid-phase diffusion of virions and by highly-efficient direct cell-to-cell transmission at immune cell contacts. The contribution of this…

Protrusions at the leading-edge of a cell play an important role in sensing the extracellular cues, during cellular spreading and motility. Recent studies provided indications that these protrusions wrap (coil) around the extra-cellular…

In bacteria, regulatory proteins search for a specific DNA binding target via "facilitated diffusion": a series of rounds of 3D diffusion in the cytoplasm, and 1D linear diffusion along the DNA contour. Using large scale Brownian dynamics…

Many tissues take the form of thin sheets, being only a single cell thick, but millions of cells wide. These tissue sheets can bend and buckle in the third dimension. In this work, we investigated the growth and shrinkage of suspended and…

Cell extrusion is an essential mechanism for controlling cell density in epithelial tissues. Another essential element of epithelia is curvature, which is required to achieve complex shapes, like in the lung or intestine. Here we introduce…

Surface tension governed by differential adhesion can drive fluid particle mixtures to sort into separate regions, i.e., demix. Does the same phenomenon occur in confluent biological tissues? We begin to answer this question for epithelial…

Propagation of a viscous fluid beneath an elastic sheet is controlled by local dynamics at the peeling front, in close analogy with the capillary-driven spreading of drops over a precursor film. Here we identify propagation laws for a…

Bacteriophages spreading through populations of bacteria offer relatively simple, tuneable systems for testing mathematical models of range expansion. However, such models typically assume a static state into which to expand, which is not…

The infection pathway of virus in living cell is of interest from the viewpoint of the physics of diffusion. Here, recent developments about a diffusion theory for the infection pathway of an adeno-associated virus in cytoplasm of a living…

It is known that mechanical interactions couple a cell to its neighbors, enabling a feedback loop to regulate tissue growth. However, the interplay between cell-cell adhesion strength, local cell density and force fluctuations in regulating…