Related papers: Geometric Signatures of Switching Behavior in Mech…
Biological systems must be robust for stable function against perturbations, but robustness alone is not sufficient. The ability to switch between appropriate states (phenotypes) in response to different conditions is essential for…
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…
The traditional dynamical phase transition refers to the appearance of singularities in an observable with respect to a control parameter for a late-time state or singularities in the rate function of the Loschmidt echo with respect to…
Collective cell motions underlie structure formation during embryonic development. Tissues exhibit emergent multicellular characteristics such as jamming, rigidity transitions, and glassy dynamics, but there remain questions about how those…
Based on symmetry consideration of migration and shape deformations, we formulate phenomenologically the dynamics of cell crawling in two dimensions. Forces are introduced to change the cell shape. The shape deformations induce migration of…
The phage $\lambda$ infection of an \textit{E. coli} cell has become a paradigm for understanding the molecular processes involved in gene expression and cell signaling. This system provides an example of a genetic switch, as cells with…
Morphogenesis involves the transformation of initially simple shapes, such as multicellular spheroids, into more complex $3D$ shapes. These shape changes are governed by mechanical forces including molecular motor-generated forces as well…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
Two mathematical mechanisms, responsible for the generation of a thermodynamic singularity, are individuated. For a class of short-range, confining potentials, a topology change in some family of configuration space submanifolds is the only…
Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…
Biological systems encode function not primarily in steady states, but in the structure of transient responses elicited by time-varying stimuli. Overshoots, biphasic dynamics, adaptation kinetics, fold-change detection, entrainment, and…
Mechanical unfolding of polyproteins by force spectroscopy provides valuable insight into their free energy landscapes. Most phenomenological models of the unfolding process are two-state and/or one dimensional, with the details of the…
The migration behavior of colliding cells is critically determined by transient contact-interactions. During these interactions, the motility machinery, including the front-rear polarization of the cell, dynamically responds to surface…
Geometric and structural constraints greatly restrict the selection of folds adapted by protein backbones, and yet, folded proteins show an astounding diversity in functionality. For structure to have any bearing on function, it is thus…
The origin of nonlinear responses in cells has been suggested to be crucial for various cell functions including the propagation of the nervous impulse. In physics nonlinear behavior often originates from phase transitions. Evidence for…
The ability of cells to sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environments is fundamental to a range of cellular behaviours, with substrate stiffness increasingly being found to be a key signalling factor. Although active…
One of the most unique physical features of cell adhesion to external surfaces is the active generation of mechanical force at the cell-material interface. This includes pulling forces generated by contractile polymer bundles and networks,…
Fiberboids are active filaments trapped at the interface of two phases, able of harnessing energy (and matter) fluxes across the interface in order to produce a rolling-like self-propulsion. We discuss several table-top examples and develop…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…
Cells can sense forces applied to them, but also the stiffness of their environment. These are two different phenomena, and here we investigate the mechanosensitivity of the IInd kind: how the cell can measure an elastic modulus at a single…