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Dendritic spines are small membranous structures that protrude from the neuronal dendrite. Each spine contains a synaptic contact site that may connect its parent dendrite to the axons of neighboring neurons. Dendritic spines are markedly…
We introduce and study the behavior of a tethered membrane of non-zero thickness embedded in three dimensions subject to an effective self-attraction induced by hydrophobicity arising from the tendency to minimize the area exposed to a…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
Membranes are ubiquitous in nature with primary functions that include adaptive filtering and selective transport of chemical and molecular species. Being critical to cellular functions, they are also fundamental in many areas of science…
Eukaryotic cell motility is crucial during development, wound healing, the immune response, and cancer metastasis. Some eukaryotic cells can swim, but cells more commonly adhere to and crawl along the extracellular matrix. We study the…
The adhesion bonds connecting a lipid bilayer to an underlying surface may undergo a condensation transition resulting from an interplay between a short range attractive potential between them, and a long range fluctuation-induced potential…
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…
Gradual disruption of the actin cytoskeleton induces a series of structural shape changes in cells leading to a transformation of cylindrical cell extensions into a periodic chain of "pearls". Quantitative measurements of the pearling…
Cell division and death can be regulated by the mechanical forces within a tissue. We study the consequences for the stability and roughness of a propagating interface, by analysing a model of mechanically-regulated tissue growth in the…
The viscosity of lipid bilayer membranes plays an important role in determining the diffusion constant of embedded proteins and the dynamics of membrane deformations, yet it has historically proven very difficult to measure. Here we…
Lymphedema, a disfiguring condition characterized by the asymmetrical swelling of the limbs, is suspected to be caused by dysfunctions in the lymphatic system. Lymphangions, the spontaneously contracting units of the lymphatic system, are…
Adhesion between membranes is studied using a phenomenological model, where the inter-membrane distance is coupled to the concentration of sticker molecules on the membranes. The model applies to both for adhesion of two flexible membranes…
We study the elastic response of bilayer membranes with fixed projected area to both stretching and shape deformations. A surface tension is associated to each of these deformations. By using model amphiphilic membranes and computer…
Cell membranes interact with a myriad of curvature-active proteins that control membrane morphology and are responsible for mechanosensation and mechanotransduction. Some of these proteins, such as those containing BAR domains, are curved…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…
Ultrasound is increasingly being used to modulate the properties of biological membranes for applications in drug delivery and neuromodulation. While various studies have investigated the mechanical aspect of the interaction such as…
first-principles numerical simulation model for crumpling of a stiff tethered membrane is introduced. In our model membranes, wrinkles, ridge formation, ridge collapse, as well as the initiation of stiffness divergence, are observed. The…
The behaviour and fate of tissue cells is controlled by the rigidity and geometry of their adhesive environment, possibly through forces localized to sites of adhesion. We introduce a mechanical model that predicts cellular force…
In biological systems, both skin sensitivity and body flexibility play crucial roles in haptic perception. Fully soft robots often suffer from structural fragility and delayed sensory processing, limiting their practical functionality. The…
In this paper, I study the coarsening dynamics of two-dimensional dry foam sandwiched by deformable membranes. The time-varying deformation of the confining membranes gives rise to a significant alteration in the evolution of polygonal…