Related papers: Chiral interactions between tropocollagen molecule…
During cell division, the spindle generates force to move chromosomes. In mammals, microtubule bundles called kinetochore-fibers (k-fibers) attach to and segregate chromosomes. To do so, k-fibers must be robustly anchored to the dynamic…
Recent findings suggest that shell protein distribution and morphology of bacterial microcompartments regulate the chemical fluxes facilitating reactions which dictate their biological function. We explore how the morphology and component…
We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential…
Keratin are among the most abundant proteins in epithelial cells. Functions of the keratin network in cells are shaped by their dynamical organization. Using a collection of experimentally-driven mathematical models, different hypotheses…
Colloidal membranes, self assembled monolayers of aligned rod like molecules, offer a template for designing membranes with definite shapes and curvature, and possibly new functionalities in the future. Often the constituent rods, due to…
Collagen is the most abundant extracellular-matrix protein in mammals and the main structural and load-bearing element of connective tissues. Collagen networks show remarkable strain-stiffening properties which tune the mechanical functions…
The occurrence of coiled or helical morphologies is common in nature, from plant roots to DNA packaging into viral capsids, as well as in applications such as oil drilling processes. In many examples, chiral structures result from the…
Two novel chiral block lattice topologies are here conceived having interesting auxetic and acoustic behavior. The architectured chiral material is made up of a periodic repetition of square or hexagonal rigid and heavy blocks connected by…
Cells in tissues can organize into a broad spectrum of structures according to their function. Drastic changes of organization, such as epithelial-mesenchymal transitions or the formation of spheroidal aggregates, are often associated…
Colloidal membranes are monolayer assemblies of rodlike particles that capture the long-wavelength properties of lipid bilayer membranes on the colloidal scale. Recent experiments on colloidal membranes formed by chiral rodlike viruses…
The hysteretic behavior exhibited by collagen fibrils, when subjected to cyclic loading, is known to result in both dissipation as well as accumulation of residual strain. On subsequent relaxation, partial recovery has also been reported.…
The study of the interactions of living adherent cells with mechanically stable (visco)elastic materials enables understanding and exploiting physiological phenomena mediated by cell-extracellular communication. However, insight on the…
Intimately connected to the rule of life, chirality remains a long-time fascination in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. Chiral structures, e.g., nucleic acid and cholesteric phase developed from chiral molecules are common…
We study the pattern formation of chiral charges in the presence of reactions. We show that, in contrast to the original Turing's mechanism of pattern formation in diffusion-reaction systems, the interplay between chiral effects and…
Catenanes as interlocked molecules with a nonplanar graph have gained increasing attention for their unique features such as topological chirality. To date, the majority of research in this field has been focusing on catenanes comprising…
Cells can sense and respond to mechanical signals over relatively long distances across fibrous extracellular matrices. Here, we explore all of the key factors that influence long range force transmission in cell-populated collagen…
Intermediate filaments are the least explored among the large cytoskeletal elements. We show here that they display conformational anomalies in narrow microfluidic channels. Their unusual behavior can be understood as the consequence of a…
In many biological materials with a hierarchical structure there is an intriguing and unique mechanism responsible for the 'propagation' of order from the molecular to the nano- or micro-scale level. Here we present a much simpler molecular…
Competing interactions stabilize exotic mesoscopic structures, yet the microscopic mechanisms by which they influence non-equilibrium processes leading to disordered states remain largely unexplored, despite their critical role in…
The propagation of chirality across scales is a common but poorly understood phenomenon in soft matter. In this work, we use computer simulations to study chiral monolayer assemblies formed by hard rod-like colloidal particles in the…