Related papers: Dynamics of membranes driven by actin polymerizati…
Self organization mechanisms are essential for the cytoskeleton to adapt to the requirements of living cells. They rely on the intricate interplay of cytoskeletal filaments, crosslinking proteins and molecular motors. Here we present an in…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
Actin filaments, crosslinkers and myosin molecular motors form contractile networks. For instance, the cell cortex is a thin network below the cell membrane ; contraction of the cell cortex allows cells to round up during cell division.…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
Motivated by recent experiments on biomimetic membranes exposed to several aqueous phases, we theoretically study the morphology of a membrane in contact with a liquid droplet formed via aqueous phase separation. We concentrate on membranes…
We report the self-assembly of thin actin shells beneath the membranes of giant vesicles. Ion-carrier mediated influx of Mg2+ induces actin polymerization in the initially spherical vesicles. Buckling of the vesicles and the formation of…
We study the shape dynamics of a two-component fluid membrane, using a dynamical triangulation monte carlo simulation and a Langevin description. Phase separation induces morphology changes depending on the lateral mobility of the lipids.…
The polarization and motility of eukaryotic cells depends on assembly and contraction of the actin cytoskeleton and its regulation by proteins called GTPases. The activity of GTPases causes assembly of filamentous actin (by GTPases Cdc42,…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
A living cell actively generates traction forces on its environment with its actin cytoskeleton. These forces deform the cell elastic substrate which, in turn, affects the traction forces exerted by the cell and can consequently modify the…
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…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
We present the first numerical simulation of actin-driven propulsion by elastic filaments. Specifically, we use a Brownian dynamics formulation of the dendritic nucleation model of actin-driven propulsion. We show that the model leads to a…
In clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME), clathrin and various adaptor proteins coat a patch of the plasma membrane, which is reshaped to form a budded vesicle. Experimental studies have demonstrated that elevated membrane tension can inhibit…
Eukaryote cells have a flexible shape, which dynamically changes according to the function performed by the cell. One mechanism for deforming the cell membrane into the desired shape is through the expression of curved membrane proteins.…
We construct a model to explore the hydrodynamic interactions of active inclusions in curved biological membranes. The curved membrane is modelled as a two dimensional layer of highly viscous fluid, surrounded by external solvents of…
We perform an analytical investigation of the cell interface dynamics in the framework of a minimal phase field model of cell motility suggested in [1], which consists of two coupled evolution equations for the order parameter and a…
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…
Eukaryotic cells adhere to extracellular matrix during the normal development of the organism, forming static adhesion as well as during cell motility. We study this process by considering a simplified coarse-grained model of a vesicle that…