生物物理
This paper establishes a conceptual and theoretical framework for multilevel communication between quantum, molecular, cellular, tissue-organ, whole body, and other biophysical spaces. The wave-mechanical description of electromagnetic…
Soil harbors much of Earth's bacterial life. The activity of these bacteria governs plant growth, carbon and nitrogen cycling, and the response of land to a changing climate. Understanding this activity is difficult, however: soil is…
Continuous video is difficult to obtain during field studies of sprint sled dogs, limiting analysis of stride-to-stride variation during load-pulling gallop. We developed an acceleration-based pipeline to identify recurrent stride states…
The human cerebral cortex, initially smooth, progressively folds during fetal brain development in utero, giving rise to cortical convolutions. Atypical cortical folding patterns can be associated with neurodevelopmental and neurological…
Chiral patterns have been observed in various processes from swirling bacterial colonies to tissue morphogenesis and cytoskeletal organization, yet the physical mechanisms underlying chiral cell motion remain poorly understood. Motivated by…
DNA loop formation is a key mechanism in gene regulation, and looping kinetics are sensitive to mechanical tension acting on the DNA. In both single-molecule experiments and biological settings, this tension is typically transmitted through…
Biological fibers exhibit exceptional mechanical properties such as high stiffness, toughness, and elasticity. The stiffness of bio-fibers is governed by a hierarchical microstructure that is highly sensitive to the extraction method,…
Tissue surfaces exhibit complex curvature during embryogenesis and oncogenesis. Evidence shows that cells can actively sense curvature to regulate behavior and fate, yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we develop a vertex…
Biochemical traveling waves transmit signals across cells and tissues, but the thermodynamic cost of reliable propagation remains unclear. We develop a stochastic thermodynamic framework for reaction--diffusion systems with stable traveling…
Animals navigating complex vertical environments must secure stable footholds, a challenge for species without feet. While arboreal climbing has evolved repeatedly in snakes, the physical mechanisms they use to scale broad, nearly flat…
In this work we design a multi-layer model of composite contact lens drug release. Such lenses have been designed by encapsulating drug-polymer films in contact lens hydrogels. Composite lenses can promote sustained discharge of drug and…
At equilibrium, the ratio of two steady-state probabilities is a Boltzmann factor, set by a free-energy difference. Such ratios are the natural, normalization-independent readouts of both thermodynamics and information processing, and are…
Phase-separated liquid droplets organize molecules in cells, but the underlying physical principles differ from abiotic mixing and quantitative rules in living systems remain poorly understood. The pyrenoid -- a liquid-like organelle that…
In our earlier work, we modeled the stochastic initiation of HIV rebound by treating latent-cell reactivation as a Poisson-driven process during antiretroviral-therapy (ART) washout, immune modulation, and therapeutic…
Biological aging is conventionally indexed by chronological time, yet every organism is a physical system tracing a worldline through spacetime, so the time available to its metabolism is not coordinate time $t$ but relativistic proper time…
Biological theory usually treats time as an external chronological variable against which growth, aging, and ecological change are parametrized. Yet living systems also generate an internal measure of duration through physiological cycling…
Diatom-dominated intertidal microphytobenthic biofilms experience daily fluctuations in irradiance, which can lead to oxidative stress within the photosynthetic apparatus through the production and accumulation of reactive oxygen species.…
Spinal cord stimulation is routinely used for the treatment of chronic pain, and is increasingly being investigated for the restoration of movement after paralysis. However, most of our current knowledge on epidural spinal cord stimulation…
Phytofluidic platforms have enabled controlled studies of plant roots, however, most existing systems either impose geometric confinement without flow or introduce hydrodynamics in single-channel devices that limit throughput and disrupt…
In previous work we sought to address the fundamental question ``What is life?''. Building on that conceptual foundation, we here integrate traditional criteria for living systems with our recent proposals on physical identity and self, and…