Related papers: L\'evy distributed fluctuations in the living cell…
Swimming microorganisms rely on effective mixing strategies to achieve efficient nutrient influx. Recent experiments, probing the mixing capability of unicellular biflagellates, revealed that passive tracer particles exhibit anomalous…
Complex coherent dynamics is present in a wide variety of neural systems. A typical example is the voltage transitions between up and down states observed in cortical areas in the brain. In this work, we study this phenomenon via a…
It is well known that many biochemical processes in the cell such as gene regulation, growth signals and activation of ion channels, rely on mechanical stimuli. However, the mechanism by which mechanical signals propagate through cells is…
Animal movements have been related to optimal foraging strategies where self-similar trajectories are central. Most of the experimental studies done so far have focused mainly on fitting statistical models to data in order to test for…
Mechanical forces generated by myosin II molecular motors drive diverse cellular processes, most notably shape change, division and locomotion. These forces may be transmitted over long range through the cytoskeletal medium - a disordered,…
We report the first measurements of the intrinsic strain fluctuations of living cells using a recently-developed tracer correlation technique along with a theoretical framework for interpreting such data in heterogeneous media with…
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…
We predict the existence of exchange broadening of optical lineshapes in disordered molecular aggregates and a nonuniversal disorder scaling of the localization characteristics of the collective electronic excitations (excitons). These…
A recent model of Ariel et al. [1] for explaining the observation of L\'evy walks in swarming bacteria suggests that self-propelled, elongated particles in a periodic array of regular vortices perform a super-diffusion that is consistent…
We consider a broad class of Continuous Time Random Walks with large fluctuations effects in space and time distributions: a random walk with trapping, describing subdiffusion in disordered and glassy materials, and a L\'evy walk process,…
During migration, amoeboid cells perform a cycle of quasi-periodic repetitive events (motility cycle). the cell length and the strain energy exchanged with the substrate oscillate in time with an average frequency, f, on top of which are…
Cell movement, for example during embryogenesis or tumor metastasis, is a complex dynamical process resulting from an intricate interplay of multiple components of the cellular migration machinery. At first sight, the paths of migrating…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Mechanochemical coupling was studied for two different types of myosin motors in cells: myosin V, which carries cargo over long distances by as a single molecule; and myosin II, which generates a contracting force in cooperation with other…
Diffusion processes are widespread in biological and chemical systems, where they play a fundamental role in the exchange of substances at the cellular level and in determining the rate of chemical reactions. Recently, the classical picture…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…
Cell crawling requires the generation of intracellular forces by the cytoskeleton and their transmission to an extracellular substrate through specific adhesion molecules. Crawling cells show many features of excitable systems, such as…
Transport of dense core vesicles (DCVs) in neurons is crucial for distributing molecules like neuropeptides and growth factors. We studied the experimental trajectories of dynein-driven directed movement of DCVs in the ALA neuron C. elegans…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
Cell shape changes are vital for many physiological processes such as cell proliferation, cell migration and morphogenesis. They emerge from an orchestrated interplay of active cellular force generation and passive cellular force response -…