Related papers: Lipid membrane domains control actin network visco…

Biological tissues exhibit complex behaviors with their dynamics often resembling inert soft matter such as liquids, polymers, colloids, and liquid crystals. These analogies enable physics-based approaches for investigations of emergent…

Liquid-liquid phase separation, whereby two liquids spontaneously demix, is ubiquitous in industrial, environmental, and biological processes. While isotropic fluids are known to condense into spherical droplets in the binodal region, these…

Biological membranes by virtue of their elastic properties should be capable of propagating localized perturbations analogous to sound waves. However, the existence and the possible role of such waves in communication in biology remains…

We theoretically investigate the dynamics of a floating lipid bilayer membrane coupled with a two-dimensional cytoskeleton network, taking into explicitly account the intermonolayer friction, the discrete lattice structure of the…

The plasma membrane of human red blood cells consists of a lipid bilayer attached to a regular network of underlying cytoskeletal polymers. We model this system at a dynamic coarse-grained level, treating the bilayer as an elastic sheet and…

Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…

We formulate a simple effective model to describe molecular interactions in a lipid monolayer. The model represents lipid molecules in terms of two-dimensional anisotropic particles on the plane of the monolayer. These particles interact…

Lipid vesicles consist of aqueous cores surrounded by a bilayer of phospholipids. Hybrid polymer-lipid vesicles incorporate both polymers and lipids, offering promising properties for developing pharmaceuticals, biosensors, and artificial…

The synthetic actin network arouses great interest as bio-material due to its soft and wet nature that mimics many biological scaffolding structures. Inside the cell, the actin network is regulated by tens of actin-binding proteins (ABP's),…

We propose a continuum theory of the liquid-liquid phase separation in an elastic network where phase-separated microscopic droplets rich in one fluid component can form as an interplay of fluids mixing, droplet nucleation, network…

The dynamics of a folded protein is studied in water and glycerol at a series of temperatures below and above their respective dynamical transition. The system is modeled in two distinct states whereby the protein is decoupled from the bulk…

The structural reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is facilitated through the action of motor proteins that crosslink the actin filaments and transport them relative to each other. Here, we present a combined experimental-computational…

Biological membranes are elastic media in which the presence of a transmembrane protein leads to local bilayer deformation. The energetics of deformation allow two membrane proteins in close proximity to influence each other's equilibrium…

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…

Short DNA linkers are increasingly being exploited for driving specific self-assembly of Brownian objects. DNA-functionalised colloids can assemble into ordered or amorphous materials with tailored morphology. Recently, the same approach…

We develop a model for gels and entangled solutions of semiflexible biopolymers such as F-actin. Such networks play a crucial structural role in the cytoskeleton of cells. We show that the rheologic properties of these networks can result…

In multicellular systems, adhesion complexes, such as those composed of E-cadherin and associated catenins, mechanically couple neighboring cells by directly linking their actin-based cytoskeletal assemblies. However, the mechanics of how…

Living cells are capable of interacting with their environments in a variety of ways, including cell signalling, adhesion, and directed motion. These behaviours are often mediated by receptor molecules embedded in the cell membrane, which…

Living tissues show an extraordinary adaptiveness to strain, which is crucial for their proper biological functioning. The physical origin of this mechanical behaviour has been widely investigated using reconstituted networks of collagen…

The dynamics of active viscoelastic surfaces plays an important role in biological systems. One prominent example is the actin cortex, a thin bio-polymer sheet underneath the outer membrane of biological cells which combines active…