生物物理
Foot stiffness underlies its mechanical function, and is central to the evolution of human bipedal locomotion. The stiff and propulsive human foot has two distinct arches, the longitudinal and transverse. By contrast, the feet of non-human…
We develop a method for solving mathematical models of messenger RNA (mRNA) translation based on the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP). Our main goal is to demonstrate that the method is versatile and applicable to…
Microscopies have become pillars of our characterization tools to observe biological systems and assemblies. Correlative and synchronous use of different microscopies relies on the fundamental assumption of non-interference during images…
Prolonged lag time can be induced by starvation contributing to the antibiotic tolerance of bacteria. We analyze the optimal lag time to survive and grow the iterative and stochastic application of antibiotics. A simple model shows that the…
This project delves into the concepts of electromagnetic waves of light and introduces the concepts of wavelength and polarization, these concepts are related to the ability of bees to perceive ultraviolet light and polarized light. This…
Optical microscopy has a diffraction limited resolution of about 250 nm. Fluorescence methods (e.g. PALM, STORM, STED) beat this, but they are still limited to 10 s of nm, and the images are an indirect pointillist representation of only…
Living tissues undergo wetting transitions: On a surface, they can either form a droplet-like cell aggregate or spread as a monolayer of migrating cells. Tissue wetting depends not only on the chemical but also on the mechanical properties…
Using a new semi empirical method for calculating molecular polarizabilities and the Clausius Mossotti relation, we calculated the static dielectric constants of dry proteins for all structures in the protein data bank (PDB). The mean…
Blood flow in sickle cell disease (SCD) can substantially differ from normal blood flow due to significant alterations in the physical properties of the red blood cells (RBCs). Chronic complications, such as inflammation of the endothelial…
Transport of excitons through transfer networks is a unique example where the interplay between quantum coherence and environment-induced dephasing leads to non-trivial effects. One exciting example is the "environment-assisted quantum…
By constructing a Landau-like energy functional, we investigate the molecular organization of a three-component mixture in cell membranes. In the strongly interacting limit, we model the interaction between molecules using pseudospin…
In this review, we aim to introduce the reader to the technique of electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) with a focus on its biological and medical applications. We explain the theoretical and experimental aspects of the EIS with the…
Cellular decision making allows cells to assume functionally different phenotypes in response to microenvironmental cues, without genetic change. It is an open question, how individual cell decisions influence the dynamics at the tissue…
Collective cell migration is crucial in many biological processes such as wound healing, tissue morphogenesis, and tumor progression. The leading front of a collective migrating epithelial cell layer often destabilizes into multicellular…
Amorphous materials exhibit complex material proprteties with strongly nonlinear behaviors. Below a yield stress they behave as plastic solids, while they start to yield above a critical stress $\Sigma_c$. A key quantity controlling…
Applications of Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) in biology have expanded tremendously in the last 25 years. This technique has become a staple technique in many biological and biophysical fields. FRET based chemical sensors…
During development, organisms acquire three-dimensional shapes with important physiological consequences. While the basic mechanisms underlying morphogenesis are known in eukaryotes, it is often difficult to manipulate them in vivo. To…
Coarse-grained models can be of great help to address the problem of structure prediction in nucleic acids. On one hand they can make the prediction more efficient, while on the other hand, they can also help to identify the essential…
The mechanism through which cells determine their fate is intimately related to the spreading of certain biochemical (so-called epigenetic) marks along their genome. The mechanisms behind mark spreading and maintenance are not yet fully…
Bacteria living on surfaces use different types of motility mechanisms to move on the surface in search of food or to form micro-colonies. Twitching is one such form of motility employed by bacteria such as N. gonorrhoeae, in which the…