Related papers: Mechanical oscillations at the cellular scale
Biological systems can rely on collective formation of a metachronal wave in an ensemble of oscillators for locomotion and for fluid transport. We consider one-dimensional chains of phase oscillators with nearest neighbor interactions,…
In human cells, estrogenic signals induce cyclical association and dissociation of specific proteins with the DNA in order to activate transcription of estrogen-responsive genes. These oscillations can be modeled by assuming a large number…
Many intracellular processes continue to oscillate during the cell cycle. Although it is not well-understood how they are affected by discontinuities in the cellular environment, the general assumption is that oscillations remain robust…
A study is made of how active membrane proteins can modify the long wavelength mechanics of fluid membranes. The activity of the proteins is modelled as disturbing the protein surroundings through non-local force distributions of which a…
Phase separating systems that are maintained away from thermodynamic equilibrium via molecular processes represent a class of active systems, which we call active emulsions. These systems are driven by external energy input for example…
The motility of a fish keratocyte on a flat substrate exhibits two distinct regimes: the non-migrating and the migrating one. In both configurations the shape is fixed in time and, when the cell is moving, the velocity is constant in…
Oscillatory behaviour in force-generating systems is a pervasive phenomenon in cell biology. In this work, we investigate how oscillations in the actomyosin cytoskeleton drive cell shape changes during the process of Dorsal Closure, a…
A model system inspired by recent experiments on the dynamics of a folded protein under the influence of a sinusoidal force is investigated and found to replicate many of the response characteristics of such a system. The essence of the…
Circadian clocks play a pivotal role in orchestrating numerous physiological and developmental events. Waveform shapes of the oscillations of protein abundances can be informative about the underlying biochemical processes of circadian…
Membrane tubulation is a ubiquitous process that occurs both at the plasma membrane and on the membranes of intracellular organelles. These tubulation events are known to be mediated by forces applied on the membrane either due to motor…
Certain cellular processes take the form of activity pulses that can be interpreted in terms of noise-driven excitable dynamics. Here we present an overview of different gene circuit architectures that exhibit excitable pulses of protein…
Collective motion is a phenomenon observed across length scales in nature, from bacterial swarming and tissue migration to the flocking of animals. The mechanisms underlying this behavior vary significantly depending on the biological…
Motor proteins drive persistent motion and self-organisation of cytoskeletal filaments. However, state-of-the-art microscopy techniques and continuum modelling approaches focus on large length and time scales. Here, we perform…
In living cells, cycles of formation and dissolution of liquid droplets can mediate biological functions such as DNA repair. However, the minimal physicochemical prerequisite for such droplet oscillations remains elusive. Here, we present a…
Activity and renewability are distinctive features of living matter, and constitute a new class of materials that we term renewable active matter. A striking example is the cell cytoskeleton, where myosin filaments bind to the actin…
It is known from the wave-like motion of microtubules in motility assays that the piconewton forces that motors produce can be sufficient to bend the filaments. In cellular phenomena such as cytosplasmic streaming, molecular motors…
Active matter systems evade the constraints of thermal equilibrium, leading to the emergence of intriguing collective behavior. A paradigmatic example is given by motor-filament mixtures, where the motion of motor proteins drives alignment…
Interaction of electric fields with biological cells is indispensable for many physiological processes. Thermal electrical noise in the cellular environment has long been considered as the minimum threshold for detection of electrical…
Oscillatory activities are widely observed in specific frequency bands of recorded field potentials in different brain regions, and play critical roles in processing neural information. Understanding the structure of these oscillatory…
Many biological systems are appropriately viewed as passive inclusions immersed in an active bath: from proteins on active membranes to microscopic swimmers confined by boundaries. The non-equilibrium forces exerted by the active bath on…