Related papers: Rigidity and mechanical response in biological str…
Short-term survival and an exuberant plunge into building our future are generating a new kind of unintended consequence -- hidden fragility. This is a direct effect of the sophistication and structural complexity of the socio-technical…
Disordered fibrous networks are ubiquitous in nature as major structural components of living cells and tissues. The mechanical stability of networks generally depends on the degree of connectivity: only when the average number of…
Unlike many physical nonequilibrium systems, in biological systems, the coupling to external energy sources is not a fixed parameter but adaptively controlled by the system itself. We do not have theoretical frameworks that allow for such…
All systems are expected to be designed to fulfil their functions over their requested lifetime. Nevertheless, failure of a system may occur, and this is unfortunately, true also for vacuum systems. From a mechanical point of view,…
Living systems are thermodynamically open but closed in their organization. In other words, even though their material components turn over constantly, a material-independent property persists, which we call organization. Moreover,…
In these notes we review emergent phenomena in complex systems, emphasizing ways to identify potential underlying universal mechanisms that generates complexity. The discussion is centered around the emergence of collective behavior in…
A constitutive relation between stress and strain relative to a reference state is the basic assumption of elasticity theory. However, in living matter, force generation is governed by motor molecule activity, which does not depend on…
We compare rigidity of materials in two phases, liquid and solid phases. As a measure of the rigidity, we employ the one characterizing how firmly the material is fixed by low density of pinning centers, such as impurities and rough…
Biological systems perform an astonishing array of dynamical processes -- including development and repair, regulation, behavior and motor control, sensing and signaling, and adaptation, among others. Powered by the transduction of stored…
Although species longevity is subject to a diverse range of selective forces, the mortality curves of a wide variety of organisms are rather similar. We argue that aging and its universal characteristics may have evolved by means of a…
Nearly-elastic model systems with one or two degrees of freedom are considered: the system is undergoing a small loss of energy in each collision with the "wall". We show that instabilities in this purely deterministic system lead to…
The relationship between network topology and system dynamics has significant implications for unifying our understanding of the interplay among metabolic, gene-regulatory, and ecosystem network architecures. Here we analyze the stability…
Species or population that proliferate faster than others become dominant in numbers. Catalysis allows catalytic sets within a molecular reaction network to dominate the non catalytic parts of the network by processing most of the available…
The theory of disordered elastic systems is one of the most powerful frameworks to assess the physics of multiple systems that span from ferromagnets to migrating biological cells. In this formalism, one assumes that the system can be…
Throughout biology, hierarchy is a recurrent theme in the geometry of structures where strength is achieved with minimal use of material. Acting over vast timescales, evolution has brought about beautiful solutions to problems of…
Rigidity transitions in simple models of confluent cells have been a powerful organizing principle in understanding the dynamics and mechanics of dense biological tissue. In this work we explore the interplay between geometry and rigidity…
Human and artificial organizations may be described as networks of interacting parts. Those parts exchange data and control information and, as a result of these interactions, organizations produce emergent behaviors and purposes -- traits…
The recent discovery of a lateral organization in cell membranes due to small structures called 'rafts' has motivated a lot of biological and physico-chemical studies. A new experiment on a model system has shown a spectacular budding…
Models for confluent biological tissues often describe the network formed by cells as a triple-junction network, similar to foams. However, higher order vertices or multicellular rosettes are prevalent in developmental and {\it in vitro}…
Nature uses elongated shapes and filaments to build stable structures, generate motion, and allow complex geometric interactions. In this Review, we examine the role of biological filaments across different length scales. From the molecular…