亚细胞过程
Motor proteins display widely different stepping patterns as they move on microtubule tracks, from the deterministic linear or helical motion performed by the protein kinesin to the uncoordinated random steps made by dynein. How these…
Chloroplasts regulate their growth to optimize photosynthesis. Quantitative data shows that the ratio of total chloroplast area to mesophyll cell area is constant across different cells within a single species, and also across species.…
Cellular responses often require the fast activation or repression of specific genes, which depends on Transcription Factors (TFs) that have to quickly find the promoters of these genes within a large genome. Transcription Factors (TFs)…
Theoretical and experimental evidences support the hypothesis that extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields can affect voltage-gated channels. Little is known, however, about their effect on potassium channels. Kv1.3, a member of the…
Keratin are among the most abundant proteins in epithelial cells. Functions of the keratin network in cells are shaped by their dynamical organization. Using a collection of experimentally-driven mathematical models, different hypotheses…
Bond rupture mechanism enables to explain in block asymmetry of elaxation, force-velocity curve and the path of energy dissipation in muscle
Several independent observations have suggested that catastrophe transition in microtubules is not a first-order process, as is usually assumed. Recent {\it in vitro} observations by Gardner et al.[ M. K. Gardner et al., Cell {\bf147}, 1092…
Viral infection requires the binding of receptors on the target cell membrane to glycoproteins, or ``spikes,'' on the viral membrane. The initial entry is usually classified as fusogenic or endocytotic. However, binding of viral spikes to…
Biological membranes are elastic media in which the presence of a transmembrane protein leads to local bilayer deformation. The energetics of deformation allow two membrane proteins in close proximity to influence each other's equilibrium…
We study theoretically the effects of confinement on active polar gels such as the actin network of eukaryotic cells. Using generalized hydrodynamics equations derived for active gels, we predict, in the case of quasi one-dimensional…
By observing reconstituted chromatin by fluorescence microscopy (FM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), we found that the density of nucleosomes exhibits a bimodal profile, i.e., there is a large transition between the dense and dispersed…
The twin-arginine translocation (Tat) system transports folded proteins of various sizes across both bacterial and plant thylakoid membranes. The membrane-associated TatA protein is an essential component of the Tat translocon, and a broad…
Analysis of high-density superresolution imaging of receptors reveal the organization of dendrites at the nano-scale resolution. We present here simulations in empirical live cell images, which allows converting local information extracted…
We apply a recently developed model of cytoskeletal force generation to study a cell intrinsic contractility, as well as its response to external loading. The model is based on a non-equilibrium thermodynamic treatment of the…
Cells generally convert external nutrient resources to support metabolismand growth. Understanding the thermodynamic efficiency of this conversion is essential to determine the general characteristics of cellular growth. Using a simple…
Systems biology studies the structure and behavior of complex gene regulatory networks. One of its aims is to develop a quantitative understanding of the modular components that constitute such networks. The self-regulating gene is a type…
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…
The spatial organization of enzymes often plays a crucial role in the functionality and efficiency of enzymatic pathways. To fully understand the design and operation of enzymatic pathways, it is therefore crucial to understand how the…
The disappearance of the guanosine triphosphate (GTP)-tubulin cap is widely believed to be the forerunner event for the growth-shrinkage transition (`catastrophe') in microtubule filaments in eukaryotic cells. We study a discrete version of…
The membrane components of cellular organelles have been shown to segregate into domains as the result of biochemical maturation. We propose that the dynamical competition between maturation and lateral segregation of membrane components…