Related papers: Phosphatidylserine transport in cell life and deat…
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a glassy polymer widely used in biomedical engineering, namely in microfluidics applications. However, PDMS is known to interact with hydrophobic chemicals. This interaction is exacerbated at the scale of…
Channel proteins, that selectively conduct molecules across cell membranes, often exhibit an asymmetric structure. By means of a stochastic model, we argue that channel asymmetry in the presence of non-equilibrium fluctuations, fueled by…
During phloem unloading, multiple cell-to-cell transport events move organic substances to the root meristem. Although the primary unloading event from the sieve elements to the phloem pole pericycle has been characterized to some extent,…
In this work we monitor the catalytic mechanism of P-glycoprotein (Pgp) using single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Pgp, a member of the ATP binding cassette family of transport proteins, is found in the plasma…
In the mammalian plasma membrane, cholesterol can translocate rapidly between the exoplasmic and cytoplasmic leaves, so that its distribution between them should be given by the equality of its chemical potential in the leaves. Due to its…
A living cell's interior is one of the most complex and intrinsically dynamic systems, providing an elaborate interplay between cytosolic crowding and ATP-driven motion, which controls cellular functionality. Here, we investigated two…
Actin filament, F-actin, is a semiflexible polymer with a negative charge, and is one of the main constituents on cell membranes. To clarify the effect of cross-talk between a phospholipid membrane and actin filaments in cells, we conducted…
Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) such as HIV's trans-activating transcriptional activator (TAT) and polyarginine rapidly pass through the plasma membranes of mammalian cells by an unknown mechanism called transduction. They may be medically…
A qualitative model is presented, suggesting gravitational information is transduced into biological systems primarily by its effect on spatially organised membrane and cytoplasmic flows. Continuous low affinity interactions between…
Intracellular transport of DNA carriers is a fundamental step of gene delivery. We present here a theoretical approach to study generically a single virus or DNA particle trafficking in a cell cytoplasm. Cellular trafficking has been…
We present a general theoretical framework to discuss mechanisms of morphogen transport and gradient formation in a cell layer. Trafficking events on the cellular scale lead to transport on larger scales. We discuss in particular the case…
Cells control the size and organization of biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), but multiple mechanisms likely contribute to this control and remain to be fully elucidated. Here we propose a…
By embedding inert tracer particles (TPs) in a growing multicellular spheroid the local stresses on the cancer cells (CCs) can be measured. In order for this technique to be effective the unknown effect of the dynamics of the TPs on the CCs…
Fatty acids (FAs) are crucial energy metabolites, signalling molecules, and membrane building blocks for a wide range of organisms. Adipose triglyceride lipase (ATGL) is the first and presumingly most crucial regulator of FA release from…
In a previous work, we have shown that a spatially localized transmembrane pH gradient, produced by acid micro-injection near the external side of cardiolipin-containing giant unilamellar vesicles, leads to the formation of tubules that…
Virus trafficking is fundamental for infection success and plasmid cytosolic trafficking is a key step of gene delivery. Based on the main physical properties of the cellular transport machinery such as microtubules, motor proteins, our…
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…
Vesicle fusion is an important process underlying cell division, transport, and membrane trafficking. In phospholipid systems, a range of fusogens including divalent cations and depletants have been shown to induce adhesion, hemifusion, and…
Cholesterol (CHOL) drives lipid segregation and is thus a key player for the formation of lipid rafts and followingly for the ability of a cell to, e.g., enable selective agglomeration of proteins. The lipid segregation is driven by…
The first passage probability (FPP), of trafficked intracellular particles reaching a displacement L, in a given time t or inverse velocity S = t/L, can be calculated robustly from measured particle tracks, and gives a measure of particle…