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Recent experiments by Y. Gambin et al. [PNAS 103, 2098 (2006)] have called into question the applicability of the Saffman-Delbruck diffusivity for proteins embedded in the lipid bilayers. We present a simple argument to account for this…
Tension in lipid membranes is often controlled externally, by pulling on the boundary of the membrane or changing osmotic pressure across a curved membrane. But modifications of the tension can also be induced in an internal fashion, for…
Peripheral membrane proteins can reversibly and specifically bind to biological membranes to carry out functions such as cell signalling, enzymatic activity, or membrane remodelling. Structures of these proteins and of their lipid-binding…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
Cell--cell and cell-matrix adhesions play essential roles in the function of tissues. There is growing evidence for the importance of crosstalk between these two adhesion types, yet little is known about the impact of these interactions on…
Eukaryotic cells intrinsically change their shape, by changing the composition of their membrane and by restructuring their underlying cytoskeleton. We present here further studies and extensions of a minimal physical model, describing a…
The Dynamic Template model of biological cell membranes and the cytoplasm as spatially organised fluid layers is extended to plant cells, and is shown to offer a feasible shear driven mechanism for the co-alignment of internal and external…
Membrane tubes are important elements for living cells to organize many functions. Experiments have found that membrane tube can be extracted from giant lipid vesicles by a group of kinesin. How these motors cooperate in extracting the…
The lateral diffusion of lipids within membrane is of paramount importance, serving as a central mechanism in numerous physiological processes including cell signaling, membrane trafficking, protein activity regulation, and energy…
While cell crawling on a solid surface is relatively well understood, and relies on substrate adhesion, some cells can also swim in the bulk, through mechanisms that are still largely unclear. Here, we propose a minimal model for in-bulk…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…
The structure of membrane-active peptides and their interaction with lipid bilayers can be studied in oriented lipid membranes deposited on solid substrates. Such systems are desirable for a number of surface-sensitive techniques. Here we…
Cells often migrate on curved surfaces inside the body, such as curved tissues, blood vessels or highly curved protrusions of other cells. Recent \textit{in-vitro} experiments provide clear evidence that motile cells are affected by the…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
We derived free energy functional of a bilayer lipid membrane from the first principles of elasticity theory. The model explicitly includes position-dependent mutual slide of monolayers and bending deformation. Our free energy functional of…
Cilia are ubiquitous organelles involves in eukaryotic motility. They are long, slender, and motile protrusions from the cell body. They undergo active regular oscillatory beating patterns that can propel cells, such as the algae…
Membrane deformation inside living cells is crucial for the proper shaping of various intracellular organelles and is necessary during the fission/fusion processes that allow membrane recycling and transport (e.g. endocytosis). Proteins…
In tissues, cells in direct physical contact with each other can exchange ions or molecules via protein clusters called gap junctions that form channels across the membranes of adjacent cells. Here, we use a simplified biomimetic approach,…
In nature interactions between biopolymers and motor proteins give rise to biologically essential emergent behaviours. Besides cytoskeleton mechanics, active nematics arise from such interactions. Here we present a study on 3D active…
Water activity and its relationship with interactions stabilising lamellar stacks of mixed lipid bilayers in their fluid state are investigated by means of osmotic pressure measurements coupled with small-angle x-ray scattering. The…