Related papers: Hydrodynamic mechanism for stable spindle position…
Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) serve as nutrient reservoirs in egg yolk for embryonic development and as promising drug carriers. Both roles critically depend on their mobility in densely crowded biological environments. Under these…
Cellular appendages conferring motility, such as flagella or cilia, are known to synchronise their periodic beats. The origin of synchronisation is a combination of long-range hydrodynamic interactions with physical mechanisms allowing the…
Synchronization of actively oscillating organelles such as cilia and flagella facilitates self-propulsion of cells and pumping fluid in low Reynolds number environments. To understand the key mechanism behind synchronization induced by…
Organisms show a remarkable range of sizes, yet the dimensions of a single cell rarely exceed $100$ $\mu$m. While the physical and biological origins of this constraint remain poorly understood, exceptions to this rule give valuable…
From the Golgi apparatus to endosomes, organelles in the endomembrane system exhibit complex and varied morphologies that are often related to their function. Such membrane-bound organelles operate far from equilibrium due to directed…
Liquid-liquid phase separation has emerged as a fundamental mechanism underlying intracellular organization, with evidence for it being reported in numerous different systems. However, there is a growing concern regarding the lack of…
Flowing blood displays a phenomenon called margination, in which leukocytes and platelets are preferentially found near blood vessel walls, while erythrocytes are depleted from these regions. Here margination is investigated using direct…
Successful cell division requires a tight regulation of chromosome motion via the activity of molecular motors. Many of the key players at the origin of the forces generating the movement have been identified, but their spatial and temporal…
During cell division, the mitotic spindle moves dynamically through the cell to position the chromosomes and determine the ultimate spatial position of the two daughter cells. These movements have been attributed to the action of cortical…
The main motivation of this work is the quantitative prediction and description of particle manipulation (displacement across streamlines) in microfluidic flow. Much attention has been paid recently to placing particles in fast oscillatory…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
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…
The cytoplasm and biomembranes in biological cells contain large numbers of proteins that cyclically change their shapes. They are molecular machines that can function as molecular motors or carry out many other tasks in the cell. We…
Macroscopic properties and shapes of biological tissues depend on the remodelling of cell-cell junctions at the microscopic scale. We propose a theoretical framework that couples a vertex model of solid confluent tissues with the dynamics…
We present new constrained and free-swimming experiments and simulations of a pair of pitching hydrofoils interacting in a minimal school. The hydrofoils have an out-of-phase synchronization and they are varied through in-line, staggered,…
The journey of mammalian spermatozoa in nature is well-known to be reliant on their individual motility. Often swimming in crowded microenvironments, the progress of any single swimmer is likely dependent on their interactions with other…
Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…
A cellular bleb grows when a portion of the cell membrane detaches from the underlying cortex under the influence of a cytoplasmic pressure. We develop a quantitative model for the growth and dynamics of these objects in a simple…
Coordination of cytoplasmic flows on large scales in space and time are at the root of many cellular processes, including growth, migration or division. These flows are driven by organized contractions of the actomyosin cortex. In order to…
We have studied by Molecular Dynamics computer simulations the dynamics of water confined in ionic surfactants phases, ranging from well ordered lamellar structures to micelles at low and high water loading, respectively. We have analysed…