Related papers: Force Propagation in Active Cytoskeletal Networks
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Dynamic instability in the cytoskeleton underlies a great many vital cellular processes. In neurons, it is thought to play a role in information processing and the establishment of synaptic connections. It is from this interneuronal…
The cell cytoskeleton is a striking example of "active" medium driven out-of-equilibrium by ATP hydrolysis. Such activity has been shown recently to have a spectacular impact on the mechanical and rheological properties of the cellular…
Correlated velocity patterns and associated large length-scale transmission of traction forces have been observed in collective live cell migration as a response to a "wound". We argue that a simple physical model of a force-driven…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Microtubules are an essential physical building block of cellular systems. They are organized using specific crosslinkers, motors, and influencers of nucleation and growth. With the addition of anti-parallel crosslinkers, microtubule…
Myosin motor proteins drive vigorous steady-state fluctuations in the actin cytoskeleton of cells. Endogenous embedded semiflexible filaments such as microtubules, or added filaments such as single-walled carbon nanotubes are used as novel…
The interaction between actin filaments and microtubules is crucial for many eukaryotic cellular processes, such as, among others, cell polarization, cell motility and cellular wound healing. The importance of this interaction has long been…
Dense active matter, from bacterial suspensions and microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins to cellular monolayers and synthetic Janus particles, is characterised by mesoscale turbulence, the emergence of chaotic flow structures. By…
The spatial localization or sequestering of motile cargo and their dispersal within cells is an important process in a number of physiological contexts. The morphology of the cytoskeletal network, along which active, motor-driven…
Microtubules are biological protein polymers with critical and diverse functions. Their structures share some similarities with photosynthetic antenna complexes, particularly in the ordered arrangement of photoactive molecules with large…
Living systems are made of active materials with microscopic components that work together to perform macroscopic biological tasks. The breakdown of these collective functionalities leads to diseases, which, conversely, could be treated by…
Interaction between active materials and the boundaries of geometrical confinement is key to many emergent phenomena in active systems. For living active matter consisting of animal cells or motile bacteria, the confinement boundary is…
Active filaments, such as microtubules with attached cargo-carrying motor proteins, are important dynamic structures for fluid transport in and around living cells. The mathematical models of active filaments appearing in the literature…
In the work the process of the energy transfer in the cell microtubules is simulated. A system of tryptophans connected by Coulomb dipole-dipole interaction is discussed as the energy carriers. The work models the conditions under which the…
Active networks composed of biopolymers and motor proteins provide versatile biomimetic systems that have advanced active matter physics and deepened our understanding of cytoskeletal dynamics and self-organization under diverse stimuli. In…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
The cytoskeleton -- a collection of polymeric filaments, molecular motors, and crosslinkers -- is a foundational example of active matter, and in the cell assembles into organelles that guide basic biological functions. Simulation of…
Micropatterned substrates are often used to standardize cell experiments and to quantitatively study the relation between cell shape and function. Moreover, they are increasingly used in combination with traction force microscopy on soft…