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Mixtures of microtubules and molecular motors form active materials with diverse dynamical behaviors that vary based on their constituents' molecular properties. We map the non-equilibrium phase diagram of microtubules and tip-accumulating…
During the past century, biologists and mathematicians investigated two mechanisms underlying bacteria motion: the run phase during which bacteria move in straight lines and the tumble phase in which they change their orientation. When…
We study the influence of filament elasticity on the motion of collective molecular motors. It is found that for a backbone flexibility exceeding a characteristic value (motor stiffness divided through the mean displacement between attached…
The rapid adhesion of motile bacteria from dilute suspensions poses a fundamental non-equilibrium problem: hydrodynamic interactions bias bacterial motion near surfaces without generating stable confinement, while electrostatic interactions…
In this work, we study in detail the distribution of stochastic forces generated by the molecular motors activity, in the actin cortex of pre-muscular cells. By combining active and passive rheology experiments, performed on the same…
Biological functionality of cellular aggregates is largely influenced by the activity and displacements of individual constituent cells. From a theoretical perspective this activity can be characterized by hydrodynamic transport…
The molecular motor myosin V exhibits a wide repertoire of pathways during the stepping process, which is intimately connected to its biological function. The best understood of these is hand-over-hand stepping by a swinging lever arm…
Many types of bacteria swim by rotating a bundle of helical filaments also called flagella. Each filament is driven by a rotary motor and a very flexible hook transmits the motor torque to the filament. We model it by discretizing…
We investigate stall force and polymerization kinetics of rigid protofilaments in a microtubule or interacting filaments in bundles under an external load force in the framework of a discrete growth model. We introduce the concecpt of…
In microrheology, the local rheological properties such as viscoelasticity of a complex fluid are inferred from the free or forced motion of embedded colloidal probe particles. Theoretical machinery developed for forced-probe microrheology…
Liquid-liquid phase separation of aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) is fundamental across physical and biological sciences. While well understood for passive systems, how this process is regulated by active agents such as motile bacteria…
Apoptosis, or genetically programmed cell death, is a crucial cellular process that maintains the balance between life and death in cells. The precise molecular mechanism of apoptosis signaling and how these two pathways are differentially…
Many bacteria are motile by means of one or more rotating rigid helical flagella, making them the only known organism to use rotation as a means of propulsion. The rotation is supplied by the bacterial flagellar motor, a particularly…
The accumulation of swimming bacteria near surfaces may lead to biological processes such as biofilm formation and wound infection. Previous experimental observations of Vibrio alginolyticus showed an interesting correlation between the…
A fluctuation theorem is examined for the first-passage time of a biomolecular machine (e.g., a motor protein or an enzyme) in a nonequilibrium steady-state. For such machines in which the driven, observable process is coupled to a hidden…
Bacterial growth environment strongly influences the efficacy of antibiotic treatment, with slow growth often being associated with decreased susceptibility. Yet in many cases the connection between antibiotic susceptibility and pathogen…
Myosin-V is a highly processive dimeric protein that walks with 36nm steps along actin tracks, powered by coordinated ATP hydrolysis reactions in the two myosin heads. No previous theoretical models of the myosin-V walk reproduce all the…
One of the most challenging problems in microbiology is to understand how a small fraction of microbes that resists killing by antibiotics can emerge in a population of genetically identical cells, the phenomenon known as persistence or…
Small mechanical forces play important functional roles in many crucial cellular processes, including in the dynamical behavior of the cytoskeleton and in the regulation of osmotic pressure through membrane-bound proteins. Molecular…
The dynamics of molecular motors which occasionally detach from a heterogeneous track like DNA or RNA is considered. Motivated by recent single molecule experiments, we study a simple model for a motor moving along a disordered track using…