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Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Cell extravasation is a crucial step of the metastatic cascade. In this process, the circulating tumor cells inside the blood vessels adhere to the cell monolayer of the blood vessel wall and passes through it, which allows them to invade…
Cellular patterns formed by self-organization of dislocations are a most conspicuous feature of dislocation microstructure evolution during plastic deformation. To elucidate the physical mechanisms underlying dislocation cell structure…
Optimal characterization of the mechanical properties of both cells and their surrounding is an issue of major interest. Indeed, cell function and development are strongly influenced by external stimuli. Furthermore, a change in cell…
Hyaluronic acid is an abundant polyelectrolyte in the human body that forms extracellular hydrogels in connective tissues. It is essential for regulating tissue biomechanics and cell-cell communication, yet hyaluronan overexpression is…
Understanding how to structure a porous electrode to facilitate fluid, mass, and charge transport is key to enhance the performance of electrochemical devices such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and redox flow batteries (RFBs). Using a…
During epithelial wound healing, cell morphology near the healed wound and the healing rate vary strongly among different developmental stages even for a single species like \textit{Drosophila}. We develop deformable particle (DP) model…
Understanding the spatial organisation of the genome in the cell nucleus is one of the current grand challenges in biophysics. Certain biochemical -- or epigenetic -- marks that are deposited along the genome are thought to play an…
Intercellular signaling has an important role in organism development, but not all communication occurs using the same mechanism. Here, we analyze the energy efficiency of intercellular signaling by two canonical mechanisms: diffusion of…
Cells forming various epithelial tissues have a strikingly universal distribution for the number of their edges. It is generally assumed that this topological feature is predefined by the statistics of individual cell divisions in growing…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
Many animal cells change their shape depending on the stiffness of the substrate on which they are cultured: they assume small, rounded shapes in soft ECMs, they elongate within stiffer ECMs, and flatten out on hard substrates. Cells tend…
Nanoparticles, such as viruses, can enter cells via endocytosis. During endocytosis, the cell surface wraps around the nanoparticle to effectively eat it. Prior focus has been on how nanoparticle size and shape impacts endocytosis. However,…
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful technique in structural biology and drug discovery, enabling the study of biomolecules at high resolution. Significant advancements by structural biologists using cryo-EM have led to the…
Through mechanical forces, biological cells remodel the surrounding collagen network, generating striking deformation patterns. Tethers-tracts of high densification and fiber alignment-form between cells, thinner bands emanate from cell…
Nonlinear stiffening is a ubiquitous property of major types of biopolymers that make up the extracellular matrices (ECM) including collagen, fibrin and basement membrane. Within the ECM, many types of cells such as fibroblasts and cancer…
Effective resistance (ER) is an attractive way to interrogate the structure of graphs. It is an alternative to computing the eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian. One attractive application of ER is to point clouds, i.e. graphs whose…
We describe a concept that has the potential to change how we think about the underlying mechanisms of cell membrane electroporation (EP). Prior experimental, theoretical and modeling have emphasized a single pore lifetime as adequate for…
Cellular contractility, migration, and extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics are critical for a wide range of biological processes including embryonic development, wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and regeneration. Even though the…
Epithelial tissues play a fundamental role in various morphogenetic events during development and early embryogenesis. Although epithelial monolayers are often modeled as two-dimensional (2D) elastic surfaces, they distinguish themselves…