Related papers: Single-molecule biophysics
In recent years, single molecule force techniques have opened a new avenue to decipher the folding landscapes of biopolymers by allowing us to watch and manipulate the dynamics of individual proteins and nucleic acids. In single molecule…
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…
Our knowledge of how individual cells self-organize to form complex multicellular systems is being revolutionized by a data outburst, coming from high-throughput experimental breakthroughs such as single-cell RNA sequencing and spatially…
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…
The importance of molecular-scale forces in sculpting biological form and function has been acknowledged for more than a century. Accounting for forces in biology is a problem that lies at the intersection of soft condensed matter physics,…
Current efforts in the biomedical sciences and related interdisciplinary fields are focused on gaining a molecular understanding of health and disease, which is a problem of daunting complexity that spans many orders of magnitude in…
The analysis of live-cell single-molecule imaging experiments can reveal valuable information about the heterogeneity of transport processes and interactions between cell components. These characteristics are seen as motion changes in 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…
While ubiquitous, energy redistribution remains a poorly understood facet of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of biomolecules. At the molecular level, finite-size effects, pronounced nonlinearities, and ballistic processes produce behavior…
Single polymer dynamics offers a powerful approach to study molecular-level interactions and dynamic microstructure in materials. Direct visualization of single chain dynamics has uncovered new ideas regarding the rheology and…
The persistent motility of the individual constituents in microbial suspensions represents a prime example of so-called active matter systems. Cells consume energy, exert forces and move, overall releasing the constraints of equilibrium…
In living systems, collective molecular behavior is driven by thermodynamic forces in the form of chemical gradients. Leveraging recent advances in the field of nonequilibrium physics, I show that increasing the thermodynamic force alone…
Microheterogeneity, as a fundamental natural property, is widely presented in a range of microscopic systems such as polymer systems, biomacromolecular systems, and nanosystems, however, the construction of molecular systems of this form…
Living systems are capable of locomotion, reconfiguration, and replication. To perform these tasks, cells spatiotemporally coordinate the interactions of force-generating, "active" molecules that create and manipulate non-equilibrium…
The term active matter describes diverse systems, spanning macroscopic (e.g. shoals of fish and flocks of birds) to microscopic scales (e.g. migrating cells, motile bacteria and gels formed through the interaction of nanoscale molecular…
We review methods of data analysis for biophysical data with a special emphasis on single molecule applications. Our review is intended for anyone, from student to established researcher. For someone just getting started, we focus on…
This article frames the relation between biology and physics by characterizing the former as a subdiscipline rather than a special case of the latter. To do this, we posit biological physics as the science of living matter in contrast to…
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…
Single and collective cell migration are fundamental processes critical for physiological phenomena ranging from embryonic development and immune response to wound healing and cancer metastasis. To understand cell migration from a physical…
Biological systems are influenced by fluid mechanics at nearly all spatiotemporal scales. This broad relevance of fluid mechanics to biology has been increasingly appreciated by engineers and biologists alike, leading to continued expansion…