Related papers: Wrapping pathways of anisotropic dumbbell particle…

Membrane budding and wrapping of particles, such as viruses and nano-particles, play a key role in intracellular transport and have been studied for a variety of biological and soft matter systems. We study nano-particle wrapping by…

The basic process of the innate immune system when phagocyte (white blood cell) engulf or swallow a target particle (bacterium or dead cell), is called phagocytosis. We apply the phase field approach in the spirit of [1], that couples the…

Phagocytosis is a fundamental process of the innate immune system, yet the physical determinants that govern the engulfment of soft, deformable targets remain poorly understood. Existing theoretical models typically approximate targets as…

A technique for determining the permeability of a phospholipid membrane on a single giant unilamellar vesicle (GUV) is described, which complements the existing methods utilizing either a planar black lipid membrane or sub-micrometre-sized…

We present a new modeling approach for G protein coupled receptors signaling systems, that take into account the compartmentalization of receptors and their effectors, both at plasma membrane and in dynamic intra-cellular vesicles called…

The response of lipid bilayers to osmotic stress is an important part of cellular function. Previously, in [Oglecka et al. 2014], we reported that cell-sized giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) exposed to hypotonic media, respond to the…

Nanoparticles, such as viruses, can enter cells via endocytosis. During endocytosis, the cell surface wraps around the nanoparticle to effectively eat it. Prior focus has been on how nanoparticle size and shape impacts endocytosis. However,…

Endocytosis is an essential process by which cells internalize a piece of plasma membrane and material from the outside. In cells with turgor, pressure opposes membrane defor- mations, and increases the amount of force that has to be…

The transport of particles across lipid-bilayer membranes is important for biological cells to exchange information and material with their environment. Large particles often get wrapped by membranes, a process which has been intensively…

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…

We study the fluid drift due to a time-dependent dumbbell model of a microswimmer. The model captures important aspects of real microswimmers such as a time-dependent flagellar motion and a no-slip body. The model consists of a rigid sphere…

Membrane wrapping underlies nanoparticle uptake during endocytosis, whereas the reverse process of membrane unwrapping accompanies particle expulsion and membrane fusion events. Existing theoretical descriptions typically focus on adhesion…

A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…

Most analyses of inertial particle motion in vortical flows rely on the point-particle approximation, in which the fluid velocity is assumed to be linear at the scale of the particle, and for heavy particles inertia typically leads to…

Capturing the emergence of deformation waves in contractile living tissues is a challenge that has recently been tackled with models of actively deformable particles. Inspired by the anisotropic deformation of cardiomyocytes in cardiac…

Cellular internalization of nanoparticles requires the full wrapping of the nanoparticles by the cell membrane. This wrapping process can occur spontaneously if the adhesive interactions between the nanoparticles and the membranes are…

Morphologies of a vesicle confined in a spherical vesicle were explored experimentally by fast confocal laser microscopy and numerically by a dynamically-triangulated membrane model with area-difference elasticity. The confinement was found…

Eukaryote cells have a flexible shape, which dynamically changes according to the function performed by the cell. One mechanism for deforming the cell membrane into the desired shape is through the expression of curved membrane proteins.…

Many proteins and peptides have an intrinsic capacity to sense and induce membrane curvature, and play crucial roles for organizing and remodelling cell membranes. However, the molecular driving forces behind these processes are not well…

Using molecular dynamics we investigate the thermodynamics, dynamics and structure of 250 diatomic molecules interacting by a core-softened potential. This system exhibits thermodynamics, dynamics and structural anomalies: a maximum in…