Related papers: Hitchhiking Through the Cytoplasm
We analyze the collective behavior of hydrodynamically coupled molecular motors. We show that the local fluxes induced by motors displacement can induce the experimentally observed bidirectional motion of cargoes and vesicles. By means of a…
We theoretically consider the carrier density tuned (apparent) two-dimensional (2D) metal-insulator-transition (MIT) in semiconductor heterostructure-based 2D carrier systems as arising from a classical percolation phenomenon in the…
Locally broken symmetries are used across fields to transport matter, particles and information in preferential directions. Beyond local mechanisms, spatially distributed nonlinearities in crystalline media have enabled non-reciprocal…
Molecular motion through pores plays a crucial role in various natural and industrial processes. One of the most fascinating features of biological channel-facilitated transport is a stochastic gating process, when the channels dynamically…
Bidirectional variants of stochastic many particle models for transport by molecular motors show a strong tendency to form macroscopic clusters on static lattices. Inspired by the fact that the microscopic tracks for molecular motors are…
In the conventional theory of hopping transport the positions of localized electronic states are assumed to be fixed, and thermal fluctuations of atoms enter the theory only through the notion of phonons. On the other hand, in 1D and 2D…
Cellular cargo can be bound to cytoskeletal filaments by one or multiple active or passive molecular motors. Recent experiments have shown that the presence of auxiliary, nondriving motors, results in an enhanced processivity of the cargo,…
While ubiquitous, energy redistribution remains a poorly understood facet of the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of biomolecules. At the molecular level, finite-size effects, pronounced nonlinearities, and ballistic processes produce behavior…
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…
To fulfill their killing functions, cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) need to migrate to search for their target cells in complex biological microenvironments, a key component of which is extracellular matrix (ECM). The mechanisms underlying…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Metabolic substrates, such as oxygen and glucose, are rapidly delivered to the cell through filtration across microvessels walls. Modelling this important process is complicated by the coupling between flow and transport equations, which…
In a prototypical mode of single-cell migration, retrograde cytoskeletal flow is mechanically coupled to the environment, propels the cell, and is sustained by an anterograde cytosolic flow of disassembled cytoskeletal components.…
Transport of ions and small molecules across the cell membrane against electrochemical gradients is catalyzed by integral membrane proteins that use a source of free energy to drive the energetically uphill flux of the transported…
In biology, there are several questions that translate to combinatorial search. For example, vesicle traffic systems that move cargo within eukaryotic cells have been proposed to exhibit several graph properties such as three connectivity.…
Transport phenomena in out-of-equilibrium systems is immensely important in a myriad of applications in biology, engineering and physics. Complex environments, such as the cytoplasm or porous media, can substantially affect the transport…
Molecular motors are specialized proteins which perform active, directed transport of cellular cargoes on cytoskeletal filaments. In many cases, cargo motion powered by motor proteins is found to be bidirectional, and may be viewed as a…
The existence of temperature gradients within eukaryotic cells has been postulated as a source of natural convection in the cytoplasm, i.e. bulk fluid motion as a result of temperature-difference-induced density gradients. Recent…
Water molecules confined between biological membranes exhibit a distinctive non-Gaussian displacement distribution, far different from bulk water. Here, we introduce a new transport equation for water molecules in the intermembrane space,…
Intracellular transport along microtubules or actin filaments, powered by molecular motors such as kinesins, dyneins or myosins, has been recently modeled using one-dimensional driven lattice gases. We discuss some generalizations of these…