Related papers: Long-Range Repulsion Between Chromosomes in Mammal…
Sorting and separation of microparticles is a challenging problem of interdisciplinary nature. Existing technologies can differentiate microparticles by their bulk properties, such as size, density, electric polarizability, etc. The next…
How long threadlike eukaryotic chromosomes fit tidily in the small volume of the nucleus without significant entanglement is just beginning to be understood, thanks to major advances in experimental techniques. Several polymer models, which…
Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion to the mechanical properties of the environment in which they find themselves--crawling in some environments while swimming in others. The latter can involve…
Chemotaxis receptors in E. coli form clusters at the cell poles and also laterally along the cell body, and this clustering plays an important role in signal transduction. Recently, experiments using flourrescence imaging have shown that,…
During the eukaryotic cell cycle, chromatin undergoes several conformational changes, which are believed to play key roles in gene expression regulation during interphase, and in genome replication and division during mitosis. In this…
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 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…
Epithelial cell clusters often move collectively on a substrate. Mechanical signals play a major role in organizing this behavior. There are a number of experimental observations in these systems which await a comprehensive explanation.…
Two-dimensional (2D) mechanical models of confluent tissues have related the mechanical state of a monolayer of cells to the average perimeter length of the cell cross sections, predicting floppiness or rigidity of the material. For the…
In living cells, proteins involved in specialized biochemical functions are often spatially organized within biomolecular condensates. Increasing evidence suggests that some of these condensates, including DNA repair condensates, emerge…
Swimming micro-organisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa are typically found in dense suspensions, and exhibit collective modes of locomotion qualitatively different from that displayed by isolated cells. In the dilute limit where…
In columnar assemblies of helical bio-molecules the azimuthal degrees of freedom, i.e. rotations about the long axes of molecules, may be important in determining the structure of the assemblies especially when the interaction energy…
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry. Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a…
From the Golgi apparatus to endosomes, organelles in the endomembrane system exhibit complex and varied morphologies that are often related to their function. Such membrane-bound organelles operate far from equilibrium due to directed…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
Transport phenomena in complex and dynamic microscopic environments are fundamentally shaped by hydrodynamic interactions. In particular, microparticle transport in porous media is governed by the delicate interplay between…
Living tissues experience various external forces on cells, influencing their behaviour, physiology, shape, gene expression, and destiny through interactions with their environment. Despite much research done in this area, challenges remain…
Cellular biology exists embedded in a world dominated by random dynamics and chance. Many vital molecules and pieces of cellular machinery diffuse within cells, moving along random trajectories as they collide with the other biomolecular…
We investigate the mechanical interplay between the spatial organization of the actin cytoskeleton and the shape of animal cells adhering on micropillar arrays. Using a combination of analytical work, computer simulations and in vitro…
The microphase separation of a diblock copolymer melt confined by hard walls and in the presence of a gravitational field is simulated by means of a cell dynamical system model. It is found that the presence of hard walls normal to the…