Related papers: Mechanical activity enables patterning and discrim…
Neurons in early sensory areas rapidly adapt to changing sensory statistics, both by normalizing the variance of their individual responses and by reducing correlations between their responses. Together, these transformations may be viewed…
Mammalian cell polarization and motility are important processes involved in many physiological and pathological phenomena, such as embryonic development, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. The traditional view of mammalian cell motility…
Motility initiation in crawling cells requires transformation of a symmetric state into a polarized state. In contrast, motility arrest is associated with re-symmetrization of the internal configuration of a cell. Experiments on keratocytes…
Active cell-junction remodeling is important for tissue morphogenesis, yet its underlying physics is not understood. We study a mechanical model that describes junctions as dynamic active force dipoles. Their instability can trigger cell…
Pattern formation and the mechanics of a mixture of actin filaments and myosin motors that is confined by a rigid membrane is investigated. By using a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model, we demonstrate that the competition between the…
Cells process external and internal signals through chemical interactions. Cells that constitute the immune system (e.g., antigen presenting cell, T-cell, B-cell, mast cell) can have different functions (e.g., adaptive memory, inflammatory…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…
The physical interpretation of the functioning of the adaptive immune system, which has been thoroughly characterized on genetic and molecular levels, provides a unique opportunity to define an adaptive self-organizing biological system in…
The organization of live cells into tissues and their subsequent biological function involves inter-cell mechanical interactions, which are mediated by their elastic environment. To model this interaction, we consider cells as spherical…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
The dynamics of a self-propelled particle are typically hard-wired by its microscopic construction, limiting the range of behaviors accessible without redesigning the particle itself. Here we show that intramolecular nonreciprocity provides…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
Biological systems tightly regulate their physiological state using control signals. This includes the actomyosin cytoskeleton, a contractile active gel that consumes chemical free energy to drive many examples of cellular mechanical…
The clonal expansion of T cells during an infection is tightly regulated to ensure an appropriate immune response against invading pathogens. Although experiments have mapped the trajectory from expansion to contraction, the interplay…
The adaptive immune system of vertebrates can detect, respond to, and memorize diverse pathogens from past experience. While the clonal selection of T helper (Th) cells is the simple and established mechanism to better recognize new…
Biological transport is supported by collective dynamics of enzymatic molecules that are called motor proteins or molecular motors. Experiments suggest that motor proteins interact locally via short-range potentials. We investigate the…
We numerically study a dynamical system model of an idiotypic immune network with a small number of degrees of freedom. The model was originally introduced by Varela et.al., and describes antibodies interacting in a body in order to prepare…
Intracellular protein patterns govern essential cellular functions by dynamically redistributing proteins between membrane-bound and cytosolic states, conserving their total numbers. This review presents a theoretical framework for…
Biological membranes and vesicles play a central role in living systems, forming dynamic interfaces that regulate cellular organization and function. Classical descriptions of membrane mechanics that are rooted in equilibrium statistical…
In many organisms, cell division is driven by the constriction of a cytokinetic ring, which consists of actin filaments and crosslinking proteins. While it has long been believed that the constriction is driven by motor proteins, it has…