Related papers: Roadmap for Condensates in Cell Biology
Phase separation and transitions among different molecular states are ubiquitous in living cells. Such transitions can be governed by local equilibrium thermodynamics or by active processes controlled by biological fuel. It remains largely…
All cells must keep time to consistently perform vital biological functions. To that end, the coupling and interrelatedness of diverse subsecond events in the complex cellular environment, such as protein folding or translation rates,…
The dynamics of active matter driven by interacting molecular motors has a non-potential structure at the local scale. However, we show that there exists a quasi-potential effectively describing the collective self-organization of the…
A number of biological processes, such as embryo development, cancer metastasis or wound healing, rely on cells moving in concert. The mechanisms leading to the emergence of coordinated motion remain however largely unexplored. Although…
The conformational dynamics of biomolecules drives the chemistry of life. We propose trapping large biomolecular ions in a Paul trap to probe their dynamics and that of their surrounding solvent cage.
Cell migration is essential for regulating many biological processes in physiological or pathological conditions, including embryonic development and cancer invasion. In vitro and in silico studies suggest that collective cell migration is…
Coupling between chemical fuel consumption and phase separation can lead to condensation at a nonequilibrium steady state, resulting in phase behaviors that are not described by equilibrium thermodynamics. Theoretical models of such…
Living systems, particularly multicellular systems, often seem hopelessly complex. But recent studies have suggested that beneath this complexity, there may be unifying quantitative principles that we are only now starting to unravel. All…
Biomolecular machines are protein complexes that convert between different forms of free energy. They are utilized in nature to accomplish many cellular tasks. As isothermal nonequilibrium stochastic objects at low Reynolds number, they…
The understanding of morphogenesis in living organisms has been renewed by tremendous progressin experimental techniques that provide access to cell-scale, quantitative information both on theshapes of cells within tissues and on the genes…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
The problem of understanding fundamental physical constants was discussed in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology. Here, I show that a new insight comes from condensed matter physics and liquid physics in particular: fundamental…
Increasingly sophisticated experiments, coupled with large-scale computational models, have the potential to systematically test biological hypotheses to drive our understanding of multicellular systems. In this short review, we explore key…
Phase separation into compositionally and physically distinct domains is ubiquitous in (non)living matter ranging from alloys and emulsions to biomolecular condensates in cells. The organization of these domains can be controlled, for…
We present a model for continuous cell culture coupling intra-cellular metabolism to extracellular variables describing the state of the bioreactor, taking into account the growth capacity of the cell and the impact of toxic byproduct…
Phase separation, crucial for spatially segregating biomolecules in cells, is well-understood in the simple case of a few components with pairwise interactions. Yet, biological cells challenge the simple picture in at least two ways: First,…
Bacterial biofilms are among the oldest and most prevalent multicellular life forms on Earth and are increasingly relevant in research areas related to industrial fouling, medicine and biotechnology. The main hurdles to obtaining definitive…
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates exhibit a wide range of dynamical properties, which depend on the sequences of the constituent proteins and RNAs. However, it is unclear to what extent condensate dynamics can be tuned without also…
Understanding how biomechanical reorganization governs key biological processes, such as morphogenesis and development, requires predictive insights into stress distributions and cellular behavior. While traditional approaches focused on…