Related papers: Cargo size limits and forces of cell-driven microt…
Motile eukaryotic cells display distinct modes of migration that often occur within the same cell type. It remains unclear, however, whether transitions between the migratory modes require changes in external conditions, or whether the…
Motor-driven intracellular transport of organelles, vesicles, and other molecular cargo is a highly collective process. An individual cargo is often pulled by a team of transport motors, with numbers ranging from only a few to several…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms provide examples of coordinated active dynamics. That has stimulated the study of a phenomenological theory combining synchronization and polar order in active matter. Here, we consider another…
Cilia and flagella are essential building blocks for biological fluid transport and locomotion at the micron scale. They often beat in synchrony and may transition between different synchronization modes in the same cell type. Here, we…
Long-distance bidirectional transport of organelles depends on the motor proteins kinesin and dynein. Using quantitative data obtained from a fungal model system, we previously developed ASEP-models of bidirectional motion of motors along…
The fast blood stream of animals is associated with large shear stresses. Consequently, blood cells have evolved a special morphology and a specific internal architecture allowing them to maintain their integrity over several weeks. For…
We study transport in synthetic, bi-disperse porous structures, with arrays of microchannels interconnected by a nanoporous layer. These structures are inspired by the xylem tissue in vascular plants, in which sap water travels from the…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
Unicellular organisms exhibit elaborate collective behaviors in response to environmental cues. These behaviors are controlled by complex biochemical networks within individual cells and coordinated through cell-to-cell communication.…
In vivo, cells navigate through complex environments filled with obstacles. Recently, the term 'topotaxis' has been introduced for navigation along topographic cues such as obstacle density gradients. Experimental and mathematical efforts…
Intracellular components explore the cytoplasm via active motor-driven transport in conjunction with passive diffusion. We model the motion of organelles in narrow tubular cells using analytical techniques and numerical simulations to study…
The molecular photo cell, i.e., a single molecule donor-acceptor complex, beside being technologically important, is a paradigmatic example of a many-body system operating in strong non-equilibrium. The quantum transport and the…
Microtubule-based molecular motors often work in small groups to transport cargos in cells. A key question in understanding transport (and its regulation in vivo) is to identify the sensitivity of multiple-motor-based motion to various…
The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…
Many natural and industrial processes rely on constrained transport, such as proteins moving through cells, particles confined in nanocomposite materials or gels, individuals in highly dense collec- tives and vehicular traffic conditions.…
Argyrodite solid electrolytes, such as Li$_6$PS$_5$Cl, exhibit some of the highest known superionic conductivities. Yet, the mechanistic understanding of Li$^+$ transport in realistic argyrodite microstructures -- where atomic-scale…
We propose an alternative mechanism for intracellular cargo transport which results from motor induced longitudinal fluctuations of cytoskeletal microtubules (MT). The longitudinal fluctuations combined with transient cargo binding to the…
The conditions under which biological cells switch from a static to a motile state are fundamental to the understanding of many healthy and pathological processes. In this paper, we show that even in the presence of a fully symmetric…
Hot carriers, inheriting excess kinetic energy from high-energy photons, underpin numerous optoelectronic applications involving non-equilibrium transport processes. Current research on hot carriers has predominantly focused on inorganic…
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…