Related papers: Directed Motion and Spatial Coherence in the Cell …
The interior of a living cell is an active, fluctuating, and crowded environment. Yet, it maintains a high level of coherent organization, which is readily apparent in the intracellular transport network. Membrane-bound compartments called…
We investigate a model of cell division in which the length of telomeres within the cell regulate their proliferative potential. At each cell division the ends of linear chromosomes change and a cell becomes senescent when one or more of…
Topology affects physical and biological properties of DNA and impacts fundamental cellular processes, such as gene expression, genome replication, chromosome structure and segregation. In all organisms DNA topology is carefully modulated…
Cell migration is closely linked to cell shape, yet cell size is often assumed to remain constant. This assumption is challenged by recent experiments showing that cells undergo volume loss during spreading and swelling upon activation,…
The three-dimensional organisation of chromosomes can be probed using methods such as Capture-C. However it is unclear how such population level data relates to the organisation within a single cell, and the mechanisms leading to the…
The migratory dynamics of cells can be influenced by the complex micro-environment through which they move. It remains unclear how the motility machinery of confined cells responds and adapts to their micro-environment. Here, we propose a…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…
We discuss recent progress towards the establishment of important structure-property-function relationships in eumelanins - key functional bio-macromolecular systems responsible for photo-protection and immune response in humans, and…
Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For cells crawling on hard surfaces, significant insights into…
Collective cell movement, characterized by multiple cells that are in contact for substantial periods of time and undergo correlated motion, plays a central role in cancer and embryogenesis. Recent imaging experiments have provided…
Native extracellular matrices (ECMs), such as those of the human brain and other neural tissues, exhibit networks of molecular interactions between specific matrix proteins and other tissue components. Guided by these naturally…
Cells are strongly out-of-equilibrium systems driven by continuous energy supply. They carry out many vital functions requiring active transport of various ingredients and organelles, some being small, others being large. The cytoskeleton,…
Characterizing the link between small-scale chromatin structure and large-scale chromosome folding during interphase is a prerequisite for understanding transcription. Yet, this link remains poorly investigated. Here, we introduce a simple…
Recent advances in high-resolution experimental methods have highlighted the significance of cell signal pathway crosstalk and localised signalling activity in the development and disease of numerous biological systems. The investigation of…
The 3D folding of a mammalian gene can be studied by a polymer model, where the chromatin fibre is represented by a semiflexible polymer which interacts with multivalent proteins, representing complexes of DNA-binding transcription factors…
Motivated by the problem of domain formation in chromosomes, we studied a co--polymer model where only a subset of the monomers feel attractive interactions. These monomers are displaced randomly from a regularly-spaced pattern, thus…
Many cellular processes require a polarization axis which generally initially emerges as an inhomogeneous distribution of molecular markers in the cell. We present a simple analytical model of a general mechanism of cell polarization taking…
While the main features of atomic nuclei are well described by nuclear mean-field models, there is a large and growing body of evidence which indicates an important additional role played by spatially-correlated nucleon-nucleon structures.…
Using Monte Carlo simulations of the Lebwohl--Lasher model we study the director ordering in a nematic cell where the top and bottom surfaces are patterned with a lattice of $\pm 1$ point topological defects of lattice spacing $a$. We find…
Epigenetic inheritance during cell division is essential for preserving cell identity by stabilizing the overall chromatin organisation. Heterochromatin,the condensed and transcriptionally silent fraction of chromatin,is marked by specific…