Related papers: Driven diffusive systems of active filament bundle…
We develop a general theory for active viscoelastic materials made of polar filaments. This theory is motivated by the dynamics of the cytoskeleton. The continuous consumption of a fuel generates a non equilibrium state characterized by the…
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…
Mesh-like structures, such as mucus gel or cytoskeleton networks, are ubiquitous in biological systems. These intricate structures are composed of cross-linked, semi-flexible bio-filaments, crucial to numerous biological processes. In many…
Movements of molecular motors on cytoskeletal filaments are described by directed walks on a line. Detachment from this line is allowed to occur with a small probability. Motion in the surrounding fluid is described by symmetric random…
Understanding the role of non-equilibrium driving in self-organization is crucial for developing a predictive description of biological systems, yet it is impeded by their complexity. The actin cytoskeleton serves as a paradigm for how…
The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…
We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…
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.…
The dynamic behavior of bundles of actin filaments growing against a loaded obstacle is investigated through a generalized version of the standard multi filaments Brownian Ratchet model in which the (de)polymerizing filaments are treated…
This paper builds on a recently introduced dynamical networking framework, applying it to model motor-driven transport along cytoskeletal filament networks. Within this approach, the networking functional describes the periodic binding and…
We introduce diffusively coupled networks where the dynamical system at each vertex is planar Hamiltonian. The problems we address are synchronisation and an analogue of diffusion-driven Turing instability for time-dependent homogeneous…
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…
Inspired by recent experimental observation of patterning at the membrane of a living cell, we propose a generic model for the dynamics of a fluctuating interface driven by particle-like inclusions which stimulate its growth. We find that…
Statistical models are essential to get a better understanding of the role of disorder in brittle disordered solids. Fiber bundle models play a special role as a paradigm, with a very good balance of simplicity and non-trivial effects. We…
The experimental use of micropatterned quasi-1D substrates has emerged as an useful experimental tool to study the nature of cell-cell interactions and gain insight on collective behaviour of cell colonies. Inspired by these experiments, we…
Tissue remodelling in diverse developmental contexts require cell shape changes that have been associated with pulsation and flow of the actomyosin cytoskeleton. Here we describe the dynamics of the actomyosin cytoskeleton as a confined…
The production of mechanical stresses in living organisms largely relies on localized, force-generating active units embedded in filamentous matrices. Numerical simulations of discrete fiber networks with fixed boundaries have shown that…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
Molecular motors interacting with cytoskeletal filaments undergo peculiar random walks consisting of alternating sequences of directed movements along the filaments and diffusive motion in the surrounding solution. An ensemble of motors is…
We present initial results regarding the existence, stability and interaction of linear and nonlinear vibrational modes in a system of two coupled, one dimensional lattices with unequal numbers of masses. The effects on these nonlinear…