Related papers: Active Intracellular Mechanics: A Key to Cellular …
The development of complex multicellular organisms from a single parent cell is a highly orchestrated process that cells conduct collectively without central guidance, creating intricate dynamic patterns essential for development and…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
We use a computational phase-field model together with analytical analysis to study how inter-cellular active forces can mediate individual cell morphology and collective motion in a confluent cell monolayer. Contractile inter-cellular…
In these Lecture Notes we aim at clarifying how soft matter physics, and herein notably statistical mechanics and fluid mechanics, can be engaged to understand and manipulate non-equilibrium systems consisting of numerous (microscopic)…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Microscopic biological systems operate far from equilibrium, are subject to strong fluctuations, and are composed of many coupled components with interactions varying in nature and strength. Researchers are actively investigating the…
Along with recent progress in structural biology and genome biology, structural dynamics of molecular systems including nucleic acids has attracted attention in the context of gene regulation. Structure-function relationship is an important…
Membrane tubulation is a ubiquitous process that occurs both at the plasma membrane and on the membranes of intracellular organelles. These tubulation events are known to be mediated by forces applied on the membrane either due to motor…
Intracellular transport processes are essential to the healthy development of many organisms as well as more generally to healthy cellular function. The complex dynamics and interactions between protein molecules and filaments on different…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
The understanding of dynamics and functioning of biological membranes and in particular of membrane embedded proteins is one of the most fundamental problems and challenges in modern biology and biophysics. In particular the impact of…
We introduce a generic, purely mechanical model for environment sensitive motion of mammalian cells that is applicable to chemotaxis, haptotaxis, and durotaxis as modes of motility. It is able to theoretically explain all relevant…
Much of our mechanistic understanding of the functions of biological macromolecules is based on static structural experiments, which can be modelled either as single structures or conformational ensembles. While these provide us with…
Despite significant fluctuation under thermal noise, biological machines in cells perform their tasks with exquisite precision. Using molecular simulation of a coarse-grained model and theoretical arguments we envisaged how kinesin, a…
Cortical actin networks are highly dynamic and play critical roles in shaping the mechanical properties of cells. The actin cytoskeleton undergoes significant reorganization over the course of the cell cycle, when cortical actin transitions…
In tissue development, wound healing, and cancer invasion, coordinated cell motion arises from active forces produced by the cells. The relationship between force and motion remains unclear, however, because the forces result from a sum of…
Contractile forces are essential for many developmental processes involving cell shape change and tissue deformation. Recent experiments on reconstituted actomyosin networks, the major component of the contractile machinery, have shown that…
The cell cortex is a thin layer beneath the plasma membrane that gives animal cells mechanical resistance and drives most of their shape changes, from migration, division to multicellular morphogenesis. It is mainly composed of actin…
Both classical and quantum electrodynamics predict the existence of dipole-dipole long-range electrodynamic intermolecular forces; however, these have never been hitherto experimentally observed. The discovery of completely new and…