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As an injury heals, an embryo develops, or a carcinoma spreads, epithelial cells systematically change their shape. In each of these processes cell shape is studied extensively, whereas variation of shape from cell-to-cell is dismissed most…
One of the most promising strategies to treat cancer is attacking it with viruses designed to exploit specific altered pathways. Here, the effects of oncolytic virotherapy on tumors having compact, papillary and disconnected morphologies…
The effect of curvature and how it induces and enhances the transport of colloidal particles driven through narrow channels represent an unexplored research avenue. Here we combine experiments and simulations to investigate the dynamics of…
The nanoparticle-Equilibrium polymer (or Wormlike micellar) system shows morphological changes from percolating network-like structures to non-percolating clusters with a change in the minimum approaching distance (EVP-excluded volume…
The problem of RNA genomes packaged inside spherical viruses is studied. The viral capsid is modeled as a hollowed sphere. The attraction between RNA molecules and the inner viral capsid is assumed to be non-specific and occurs at the inner…
Ordering nanoparticles into a desired super-structure is often crucial for their technological applications. We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the assembly of nanoparticles in a polymer brush randomly grafted to a planar…
We have prepared a homologous series of filamentous viruses with varying contour length using molecular cloning techniques. These viruses are monodisperse enough to form a stable smectic phase. Two systems are studied. The first system…
The vibrational density of states (VDOS) of nanoclusters and nanocrystalline materials are derived from molecular-dynamics simulations using empirical tight-binding potentials. The results show that the VDOS inside nanoclusters can be…
Biofilms are communities of bacteria adhered to surfaces. Recently, biofilms of rod-shaped bacteria were observed at single-cell resolution and shown to develop from a disordered, two-dimensional layer of founder cells into a…
Depletion forces and macromolecular crowding govern the structure and function of biopolymers in biological cells and the properties of polymer nanocomposite materials. To isolate and analyze the influence of polymer shape fluctuations and…
The optimal shapes attained by contractile cells on adhesive substrates are determined by the interplay between intracellular forces and adhesion with the extracellular matrix. We model the cell as a contractile film bounded by an elastic…
Cell walls define a cell shape in bacteria. They are rigid to resist large internal pressures, but remarkably plastic to adapt to a wide range of external forces and geometric constraints. Currently, it is unknown how bacteria maintain…
Living cells establish long-range orientational order through collective alignment, giving rise to topological defects whose functional relevance is increasingly recognized in tissue organization and morphogenesis. Engineered topographical…
We investigate the effect of the size of nanoparticles on the behaviour of equilibrium polymers (Wormlike micelles) and nanoparticle system. The self-organised structures of nanoparticles in the system show a morphological change from…
Biological membranes are shaped by various proteins that either generate inward or outward membrane curvature. In this article, we investigate the membrane morphologies induced by mixtures of arc-shaped particles with coarse-grained…
Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are known to play an important role in the communication between distant cells and to deliver biological information throughout the body. To date, many studies have focused on the role of sEVs…
The behavior of a system of two-dimensional elongated particles (discorectangles) packed into a slit between two parallel walls was analyzed using a simulation approach. The packings were produced using the random sequential adsorption…
Collective cell migration in 3D extracellular matrix (ECM) is crucial to many physiological and pathological processes. Migrating cells can generate active pulling forces via actin filament contraction, which are transmitted to the ECM…
Receptor-mediated endocytosis requires that the energy of adhesion overcomes the deformation energy of the plasma membrane. The resulting driving force is balanced by dissipative forces, leading to deterministic dynamical equations. While…
Cell division is an essential biological process, and regulation of cell division is of relevance for many important fields of biology and medicine. Introducing exogenous substances, such as nanoparticles, into the nucleus, has been…