Related papers: Chromosome Oscillations in Mitosis
The spreading and regulation of epigenetic marks on chromosomes is crucial to establish and maintain cellular identity. Nonetheless, the dynamical mechanism leading to the establishment and maintenance of a given, cell-line specific,…
How thousands of microtubules and molecular motors self-organize into spindles remains poorly understood. By combining static, nanometer-resolution, large-scale electron tomography reconstructions and dynamic, optical-resolution, polarized…
Many cell functions are accomplished thanks to intracellular transport mechanisms of macromolecules along filaments. Molecular motors such as dynein or kinesin are proteins playing a primary role in these processes. The behavior of such…
The collective chemotaxis of multicellular clusters is an important phenomenon in various physiological contexts, ranging from embryonic development to cancer metastasis. Such clusters often display interesting shape dynamics and…
The fate of every eukaryotic cell subtly relies on the exceptional mechanical properties of microtubules. Despite significant efforts, understanding their unusual mechanics remains elusive. One persistent, unresolved mystery is the…
The stochastic driving force exerted by a single molecular motor (e.g., a kinesin, or myosin) moving on a periodic molecular track (microtubule, actin filament, etc.) is discussed from a general viewpoint open to experimental test. An…
The rotations of microscopic magnetic particles, magnetosomes, embedded into the cytoskeleton are considered. A great number of magnetosomes are shown to possess two stable equilibrium positions, between which there occur transitions under…
Molecular motors transport various cargos along cytoskeletal filaments, analogous to trucks on roads. In contrast to vehicles, however, molecular motors do not work alone but in small teams. We describe a simple model for the transport of a…
Many different types of cellular cargos are transported bidirectionally along microtubules by teams of molecular motors. The motion of this cargo-motors system has been experimentally characterized in vivo as processive with rather…
Microtubules are key structural elements of living cells that are crucial for cell division, intracellular transport and motility. Recent experiments have shown that microtubule severing proteins and molecular motors stimulate the direct…
Although collective cell migration (CCM) is a highly coordinated and fine-tuned migratory mode, instabilities in the form of cell swirling motion (CSM) often occur. The CSM represents a product of the active turbulence obtained at low…
Cell migration is a fundamental process for life and is highly dependent on the dynamical and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton. Intensive physical and biochemical crosstalk between actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments…
The collective migration of epithelial groups of cells plays a central role in processes such as embryo development, wound healing, and cancer invasion. While finite cell clusters are known to collectively migrate in response to external…
Ribosome is a molecular machine that polymerizes a protein where the sequence of the amino acid residues, the monomers of the protein, is dictated by the sequence of codons (triplets of nucleotides) on a messenger RNA (mRNA) that serves as…
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…
Spontaneous directed motion, a hallmark of cell biology, is unusual in classical statistical physics. Here we study, using both numerical and analytical methods, organized motion in models of the cytoskeleton in which constituents are…
Cellular migration is crucial for biological processes including embryonic development, immune response, and wound healing. The myosin-clutch model is a framework that describes how cells control migration through the interactions between…
Intracellular transport is based on molecular motors that pull cargos along cytoskeletal filaments. One motor species always moves in one direction, e.g. conventional kinesin moves to the microtubule plus end, while cytoplasmic dynein moves…
Anomalously slow passive diffusion, $\langle \delta x^2(t)\rangle\simeq t^{\alpha}$, with $0<\alpha<1$, of larger tracers such as messenger RNA and endogenous submicron granules in the cytoplasm of living biological cells has been…
Motivated by recent experiments probing shape, size and dynamics of bacterial chromosomes in growing cells, we consider a polymer model consisting of a circular backbone to which side-loops are attached, confined to a cylindrical cell. Such…