Related papers: Molecular sorting on a fluctuating membrane
Eukaryotic cells maintain their inner order by a hectic process of distillation of molecular factors taking place on the surface of their lipid membranes. To understand the properties of this molecular sorting process, a physical model of…
Molecular sorting is a fundamental process that allows eukaryotic cells to distill and concentrate specific chemical factors in appropriate cell membrane subregions, thus endowing them with different chemical identities and functional…
The proper sorting of membrane components by regulated exchange between cellular organelles is crucial to intra-cellular organisation. This process relies on the budding and fusion of transport vesicles, and should be strongly influenced by…
Recent experiments suggest that membranes of living cells are tuned close to a miscibility critical point in the 2D Ising universality class. We propose that one role for this proximity to criticality in live cells is to provide a conduit…
We discuss the fluctuation-induced force, a finite-temperature analog of the Casimir force, between two inclusions embedded in a fluid membrane under tension. We suggest a method to calculate this Casimir interaction in the most general…
Cell sorting, the segregation of cells with different properties into distinct domains, is a key phenomenon in biological processes such as embryogenesis. We use a phase-field model of a confluent cell layer to study the role of activity in…
Confining in space the equilibrium fluctuations of statistical systems with long-range correlations is known to result into effective forces on the boundaries. Here we demonstrate the occurrence of Casimir-like forces in the non-equilibrium…
Phase separation within polymer networks plays a central role in shaping the structure and mechanics of both synthetic materials and living cells, including the formation of biomolecular condensates within cytoskeletal networks. Previous…
An exact statistical mechanical derivation is given of the critical Casimir interactions between two defects in a planar lattice-gas Ising model. Each defect is a group of nearest-neighbor spins with modified coupling constants. Such a…
Although Casimir forces are inseparable from their fluctuations, little is known about these fluctuations in soft matter systems. We use the membrane stress tensor to study the fluctuations of the membrane-mediated Casimir-like force. This…
We calculate the effective fluctuation induced force between spherical or disk-like colloids trapped at a flat, fluid interface mediated by thermally excited capillary waves. This Casimir type force is determined by the partition function…
Cell sorting, whereby a heterogeneous cell mixture segregates and forms distinct homogeneous tissues, is one of the main collective cell behaviors at work during development. Although differences in interfacial energies are recognized to be…
Spatial confinement of a near-critical medium changes its fluctuation spectrum and modifies the corresponding order parameter distribution. These effects result in effective, so-called critical Casimir forces (CCFs) acting on the confining…
We introduce a simple physical picture to explain the process of molecular sorting, whereby specific proteins are concentrated and distilled into submicrometric lipid vesicles in eukaryotic cells. To this purpose, we formulate a model based…
If a fluctuating medium is confined, the ensuing perturbation of its fluctuation spectrum generates Casimir-like effective forces acting on its confining surfaces. Near a continuous phase transition of such a medium the corresponding order…
Among the various kinds of effective forces in soft matter, the spatial range and the direction of the so-called critical Casimir force - which is generated by the enhanced thermal fluctuations close to a continuous phase transition - can…
The confinement of long-ranged critical fluctuations in the vicinity of second-order phase transitions in fluids generates critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces or among particles immersed in a critical solvent. This is…
The phenomenon of cell sorting/segregation, by which cells organise spatially into clusters of specific cell type or function, is essential for tissue morphogenesis. This self-organization process involves an interplay between mechanical,…
Fluid membranes made out of lipid bilayers are the fundamental separation structure in eukaryotic cells. Many physiological processes rely on dramatic shape and topological changes (e.g. fusion, fission) of fluid membrane systems. Fluidity…
The critical Casimir effect provides a thermodynamic analogue of the well-known quantum mechanical Casimir effect. It acts between two surfaces immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture, and results from the confinement of concentration…