Related papers: Single-molecule biophysics
Throughout the evolution of biological species on Earth, cells and organs have developed many complex structures and processes to ensure their interactions with individual chemical molecules (small and macromolecular) and nanoscale objects…
In biological systems, molecular-scale forces and motions are pivotal for enabling processes like motility, shape change, and replication. These forces and motions are organized, amplified, and transmitted across macroscopic scales by…
The application of single-cell molecular profiling coupled with spatial technologies has enabled charting cellular heterogeneity in reference tissues and in disease. This new wave of molecular data has highlighted the expected diversity of…
Physics students now have access to interactive molecular dynamics simulations that can model and animate the motions of hundreds of particles, such as noble gas atoms, that attract each other weakly at short distances but repel strongly…
The search for what differentiates inanimate matter from living things began in antiquity as a search for a "fundamental life force" embedded deep within living things - a special material unit owned only by life - later transforming to…
Active biological flow networks pervade nature and span a wide range of scales, from arterial blood vessels and bronchial mucus transport in humans to bacterial flow through porous media or plasmodial shuttle streaming in slime molds.…
Active systems across scales, ranging from molecular machines to human crowds, are usually modeled as assemblies of self-propelled particles driven by internally generated forces. However, these models often assume memoryless dynamics and…
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) can do more than atomic imaging and manipulation. Its tunneling current can also be used for the excitation of light, converting electron energy to photon energy. STM based single-molecule…
Free energy and entropy are examined in detail from the standpoint of classical thermodynamics. The approach is logically based on the fact that thermodynamic work is mediated by thermal energy through the tendency for nonthermal energy to…
A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…
Mobile microscopic bodies, such as motile cells, can be modelled phenomenologically as ``active particles'' which can move against external forces by depleting an internal energy depot. The microscopic mechanisms underlying such ``active''…
Previous and present "academic" research aiming at atomic scale understanding is mainly concerned with the study of individual molecular processes possibly underlying materials science applications. Appealing properties of an individual…
Cellular tissue behavior is a multiscale problem. At the cell level, out of equilibrium, biochemical reactions drive physical cell-cell interactions in a typical active matter process. Cell modeling computer simulations are a robust tool to…
Single molecule manipulation techniques reveal that the mechanical resistance of a protein depends on the direction of the applied force. Using a lattice model of polymers, we show that changing the pulling direction leads to different…
The sustenance of life depends on the high degree of organization that prevails through different levels of living organisms, from subcellular structures such as biomolecular complexes and organelles to tissues and organs. The physical…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
Droplet formation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatiotemporal organisation of biomolecules in cells. However, classical descriptions of droplet dynamics based on passive liquid-liquid phase separation cannot capture the…
At equilibrium, thermodynamic and kinetic information can be extracted from biomolecular energy landscapes by many techniques. However, while static, ensemble techniques yield thermodynamic data, often only dynamic, single-molecule…
At odds with a traditional view of molecular evolution that seeks a descent-with-modification relationship between functional sequences, new functions can emerge {\it de novo} with relative ease. At early times of molecular evolution,…
We distinguish a mechanical representation of the world in terms of point masses with positions and momenta and the chemical representation of the world in terms of populations of different individuals, each with intrinsic stochasticity,…