Related papers: Form and function in biological filaments: A physi…
Structures involving solid particles of nanometric dimensions play an increasingly important role in material sciences. These structures are often characterized through the vibrational properties of their constituent particles, which can be…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
We study a slender filament beating in a viscous fluid with novel curvature-dependent bending stiffness. Our numerical and experimental investigations reveal that such differential stiffness can sustain planar bending waves far along…
Inspired by the ubiquity of composite filamentous networks in nature we investigate models of biopolymer networks that consist of interconnected floppy and stiff filaments. Numerical simulations carried out in three dimensions allow us to…
Soft materials, such as liquids, polymers, foams, gels, colloids, granular materials, and most soft biological materials, play an important role in our daily lives. From a mechanical viewpoint, soft materials can easily achieve large…
Mounting evidence shows that oscillatory activity is widespread in cell signaling. Here we review some of this recent evidence, focusing on both the molecular mechanisms that potentially underlie such dynamical behavior, and the potential…
From flocks of birds to biomolecular assemblies, systems in which many individual components independently consume energy to perform mechanical work exhibit a wide array of striking behaviors. Methods to quantify the dynamics of these so…
Natural protein molecules are exceptional polymers. Encoded in apparently random strings of amino-acids, these objects perform clear physical tasks that are rare to find by simple chance. Accurate folding, specific binding, powerful…
Filamentous bio-materials such as fibrin or collagen networks exhibit an enormous stiffening of their elastic moduli upon large deformations. This pronounced nonlinear behavior stems from a significant separation between the stiffnesses…
Studying shape changing thick surfaces induced by differential growth helps us understand morphogenesis in biology and offers opportunities for device design. While ideal 2D differential growth maps have been well studied for both isotropic…
Molecular motors perform active movements along cytoskeletal filaments and drive the traffic of organelles and other cargo particles in cells. In contrast to the macroscopic traffic of cars, however, the traffic of molecular motors is…
The role of magnetic fields in the formation of dense filamentary structures in molecular clouds is critical for understanding the star formation process. The Snake filament in or close to the Pipe Nebula s neighboring, a prominent example…
A method of discovering how neurons are connected to process information is presented here: Design a simple logic circuit that can perform a single, biologically advantageous function. Engineering concepts can be helpful in choosing the…
Many biological functions are executed by molecular machines, which consume energy and convert it into mechanical work. Biological machines have evolved to transport cargo, facilitate folding of proteins and RNA, remodel chromatin and…
Biological filaments such as DNA or bacterial flagella are typically curved in their natural states. To elucidate the interplay of viscous drag, twisting, and bending in the overdamped dynamics of such filaments, we compute the steady-state…
The network approach became a widely used tool to understand the behaviour of complex systems in the last decade. We start from a short description of structural rigidity theory. A detailed account on the combinatorial rigidity analysis of…
Large complexes of classical particles play central roles in biology, in polymer physics, and in other disciplines. However, physics currently lacks mathematical methods for describing such complexes in terms of component particles,…
Matter in the Universe is arranged in a cosmic web, with a filament of matter typically connecting each neighbouring galaxy pair, separated by tens of millions of light-years. A quadrupolar pattern of the spin field around filaments is…
Proteins are the common constituents of all living cells. They are molecular machines that interact with each other as well as with other cell products and carry out a dizzying array of functions with distinction. These interactions follow…
We develop the mechanics of combined bending and twisting deformation of a one-dimensional filamentous structure with protruding stiff fish-scale-like plates embedded at an angle on the surface. We develop Cosserat kinematic formulation…