Related papers: Mechanical oscillations at the cellular scale
We show that oscillations are excited in a complex system under the influence of the external force, if the parameters of the system experience rapid change due to the changes in its internal structure. This excitation is collision-like and…
Spontaneous oscillations measured by Local field potentials (LFPs), electroencephalograms and magnetoencephalograms exhibits variety of oscillations spanning frequency band ($1-100$ Hz) in animals and humans. Both instantaneous power and…
Many types of mammalian cells exert active contractile forces and mechanically deform their elastic substrate, to accomplish biological functions such as cell migration. These substrate deformations provide a mechanism by which cells can…
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,…
Biological membranes and vesicles play a central role in living systems, forming dynamic interfaces that regulate cellular organization and function. Classical descriptions of membrane mechanics that are rooted in equilibrium statistical…
Cytoskeletal networks are the main actuators of cellular mechanics, and a foundational example for active matter physics. In cytoskeletal networks, motion is generated on small scales by filaments that push and pull on each other via…
We present a physical mechanism that can cause the mitotic spindle to oscillate. The driving force for this mechanism emerges from the polymerization of astral microtubules interacting with the cell cortex. We show that Brownian ratchet…
The hair cells of the vertebrate inner ear convert mechanical stimuli to electrical signals. Two adaptation mechanisms are known to modify the ionic current flowing through the transduction channels of the hair bundles: a rapid process…
Motile cilia are slender, hair-like cellular appendages that spontaneously oscillate under the action of internal molecular motors and are typically found in dense arrays. These active filaments coordinate their beating to generate…
The generation of anisotropic shapes occurs during morphogenesis of almost all organisms. With the recent renewal of the interest in mechanical aspects of morphogenesis, it has become clear that mechanics contributes to anisotropic forms in…
The action potential propagating in a nerve fibre generates accompanying mechanical and thermal effects. The whole signal is therefore an ensemble which includes primary and secondary components. The primary components of a signal are the…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…
Pulsatory activity patterns, driven by mechanochemical feedback, are prevalent in many biological systems. Here we present a theoretical framework to elucidate the mechanical origin and regulation of pulsatile activity patterns within…
The migration of cells is relevant for processes such as morphogenesis, wound healing, and invasion of cancer cells. In order to move, single cells deform cyclically. However, it is not understood how these shape oscillations influence…
Among the versatile forms of dynamical patterns of activity exhibited by the brain, oscillations are one of the most salient and extensively studied, yet are still far from being well understood. In this paper, we provide various structural…
A natural phenomenon occurring in a living system is an outcome of the dynamics of the specific biological network underlying the phenomenon. The collective dynamics have both deterministic and stochastic components. The stochastic nature…
Gene expression is a biochemical process, where stochastic binding and un-binding events naturally generate fluctuations and cell-to-cell variability in gene dynamics. These fluctuations typically have destructive consequences for proper…
We study wave propagation in networks of coupled cells which can behave as excitable or self-oscillatory media. For excitable media, an asymptotic construction of wave trains is presented. This construction predicts their shape and speed,…
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…
Spatially distributed limited-cycle oscillators are seen in various physical and biological systems. In internal organs, mechanical motions are induced by the stimuli of spatially distributed limit-cycle oscillators. We study several…