Related papers: Active thermodynamic force driven mitochondrial al…
ATP-driven proton pumps, which are critical to the operation of a cell, maintain cytosolic and organellar pH levels within a narrow functional range. These pumps employ two very different mechanisms: an elaborate rotary mechanism used by…
Mitochondrial networks exhibit a variety of complex behaviors, including coordinated cell-wide oscillations of energy states as well as a phase transition (depolarization) in response to oxidative stress. Since functional and structural…
With reference to the experimental observations by T. Yanagida and his co-workers on actomyosin interaction, a Brownian motor of fluctuating ratchet kind is designed with the aim to describe the interaction between a Myosin II head and a…
F$_\mathrm{o}$F$_1$-ATP synthase is a factory for synthesizing ATP in virtually all cells. Its core machinery is the subcomplex F$_1$-motor (F$_1$-ATPase) and performs the reversible mechanochemical coupling. Isolated F$_1$-motor hydrolyzes…
Maxwell defined a true or total current in a way not widely used today. He said "... true electric current ... is not the same thing as the current of conduction but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must be taken into…
The artificial axon is an excitable node built with the basic biomolecular components and supporting action potentials. Here we demonstrate coincidence firing (the AND operation) and other basic electrophysiology features such as increasing…
Polymerization dynamics of single actin filaments is investigated theoretically using a stochastic model that takes into account the hydrolysis of ATP-actin subunits, the geometry of actin filament tips, the lateral interactions between the…
We extend the study of the inertial effects on the dynamics of active agents to the case where self-alignment is present. In contrast with the most common models of active particles, we find that self-alignment, which couples the rotational…
Synthesis of the biological "energy currency molecule" adenosine triphosphate ATP is accomplished by FoF1-ATP synthase. In the plasma membrane of Escherichia coli, proton-driven rotation of a ring of 10 c subunits in the Fo motor powers…
Immune cells recognize and discriminate antigens through immunological synapses - dynamic intercellular junctions exhibiting highly organized receptor-ligand patterns. While much work has focused on molecular kinetics and passive mechanisms…
We analyze, from the thermodynamical point of view, mechanical systems in which there is production of mechanical energy due to an internal source of energy, and compare that analysis with the similar one for the "symmetric" motion which…
Particle motion at the micro-scale is an incessant tug-of-war between thermal fluctuations and applied forces on one side, and the strong resistance exerted by fluid viscosity on the other. Friction is so strong that completely neglecting…
Trying to identify the entropy production within a cell has been part of debates and studies in the last century. First the idea was to make a resemblance of a cell with a Carnot engine, which is the most thermodynamically perfect machine.…
Active matter constantly dissipates energy to power the self-propulsion of its microscopic constituents. This opens the door to designing innovative cyclic engines without any equilibrium equivalent. We offer a consistent thermodynamic…
The self-assembly of proteins into $\beta$-sheet-rich amyloid fibrils has been observed to occur with sigmoidal kinetics, indicating that the system initially is trapped in a metastable state. Here, we use a minimal lattice-based model to…
The cytoskeleton provides eukaryotic cells with mechanical support and helps them perform their biological functions. It is a network of semiflexible polar protein filaments and many accessory proteins that bind to these filaments, regulate…
Living systems operate far from thermal equilibrium by converting the chemical potential of ATP into mechanical work to achieve growth, replication or locomotion. Given time series observations of intra-, inter- or multicellular processes,…
Mesoscopic active systems exhibit various unique behaviours - absent in passive systems - due to the forces generated by the corresponding constituents by converting their available free energies. However, estimating these forces - which…
Tuning of active prestress e.g. through activity of molecular motors constitutes a powerful cellular tool to adjust cellular stiffness through nonlinear material properties. Understanding this tool is an important prerequisite for our…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…