Related papers: Fluctuations in type IV pilus retraction
A possible way to extract information about the reversible dissociation of a molecular adhesion bond from force fluctuations observed in force ramp experiments is discussed. For small loading rates the system undergoes a limited number of…
We study experimentally the slow growth of a single crack in a fibrous material and observe stepwise growth dynamics. We model the material as a lattice where the crack is pinned by elastic traps and grows due to thermally activated stress…
Two simple (rotator and one-particle) mechanistic models are suggested to describe simultaneously at a minimal level of sophistication two basic functions of F$_1$-ATPase: a motor regime driven by ATP hydrolysis and its inverted function as…
The intermittent transition between slow growth and rapid shrinkage in polymeric assemblies is termed dynamic instability, a feature observed in a variety of biochemically distinct assemblies including microtubules, actin and their…
Understanding cellular response to mechanical forces is immensely important for a plethora of biological processes. Focal adhesions are multi-molecular protein assemblies that connect the cell to the extracellular matrix and play a pivotal…
Janus motors with chemically active and inactive hemispheres can operate only under nonequilibrium conditions where detailed balance is broken by fluxes of chemical species that establish a nonequilibrium state. A microscopic model for…
We consider the trapping reaction, $A+B\to B$, where $A$ and $B$ particles have a diffusive dynamics characterized by diffusion constants $D_A$ and $D_B$. The interaction with $B$ particles can be formally incorporated in an effective…
During migration cells exhibit a rich variety of seemingly random migration patterns, which makes unraveling the underlying mechanisms that control cell migration a daunting challenge. For efficient migration cells require a mechanism for…
The cargo motion in living cells transported by two species of motor protein with different intrinsic directionality is discussed in this study. Similar to single motor movement, cargo steps forward and backward along microtubule…
We consider a model of an extensible semiflexible filament moving in two dimensions on a motility assay of motor proteins represented explicitly as active harmonic linkers. Their heads bind stochastically to polymer segments within a…
The statistics of steps and dwell times in reversible molecular motors differ from those of cycle completion in enzyme kinetics. The reason is that a step is only one of several transitions in the mechanochemical cycle. As a result,…
Kinesin-1 is an ATP-driven, two-headed motor protein that transports intracellular cargoes along microtubule. Based on recent experimental observations, we formulate a mechanochemical model for it, in which forward/backward/futile cycle of…
We consider the dynamics of a bio-filament under the collective drive of motor proteins. They are attached irreversibly to a substrate and undergo stochastic attachment-detachment with the filament to produce a directed force on it. We…
Numerous studies have explored the link between bacterial swimming and the number of flagella, a distinguishing feature of motile multiflagellated bacteria. We revisit this open question using augmented slender-body theory simulations, in…
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…
Many physiological phenomena involve directional cell migration. It is usually attributed to chemical gradients in vivo. Recently, other cues have been shown to guide cells in vitro, including stiffness/adhesion gradients or micro-patterned…
The chemotactic pathway allows bacteria to respond and adapt to environmental changes, by tuning the tumbling and running motions that are due to clockwise and counterclockwise rotations of their flagella. The pathway is tightly regulated…
In this work we approach cell migration under a large-scale assumption, so that the system reduces to a particle in motion. Unlike classical particle models, the cell displacement results from its internal activity: the cell velocity is a…
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…
Mathematical models of infectious disease transmission typically neglect within-host dynamics. Yet within-host dynamics - including pathogen replication, host immune responses, and interactions with microbiota - are crucial not only for…