相关论文: Strength and stability of active ligand-receptor b…
Bistability is a major mechanism for cellular decision making and usually results from positive feedback in biochemical control systems. Here we show theoretically that bistability between unbound and bound states of adhesion clusters…
Within cells, vesicles and proteins are actively transported several micrometers along the cytoskeletal filaments. The transport along microtubules is propelled by dynein and kinesin motors, which carry the cargo in opposite directions.…
In this work the computer modeling has been used to show that longer ligands allow biological cells (e.g., blood platelets) to withstand stronger flows after their adhesion to solid walls. Mechanistic model of polymer-mediated…
Filament based intracellular transport involves the collective action of molecular motor proteins. Experimental evidences suggest that microtubule (MT) filament bound motor proteins such as {\it kinesins} weakly interact among themselves…
The transfer of mechanical signals through cells is a complex phenomenon. To uncover a new mechanotransduction pathway, we study the frequency-dependent transport of mechanical stimuli by single microtubules and small networks in a…
Understanding mechanosensitivity, i.e. how cells sense the stiffness of their environment is very important, yet there is a fundamental difficulty in understanding its mechanism: to measure an elastic modulus one requires two points of…
Myxococcus xanthus is a model organism for studying bacterial social behaviors due to its ability to form complex multi-cellular structures. Knowledge of M. xanthus surface gliding motility and the mechanisms that coordinate it are…
Single receptor-ligand bonds have finite lifetimes, so that biological systems can dynamically react to changes in their environment. In cell adhesion, adhesion bonds usually act cooperatively in adhesion clusters. Outside the cellular…
Cells in multicellular organisms adhere to the extracellular matrix through two-dimensional clusters spanning a size range from very few to thousands of adhesion bonds. For many common receptor-ligand systems, the ligands are tethered to a…
The adhesion of cells is mediated by receptors and ligands anchored in apposing membranes. A central question is how to characterize the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules. For soluble molecules, the binding affinity is…
Lifetimes of bound states of protein complexes or biomolecule folded states typically decrease when subject to mechanical force. However, a plethora of biological systems exhibit the counter-intuitive phenomenon of catch bonding, where…
The most important function of proteins may well be to bind to other biomolecules. It has long been felt that kinetic rates of bond formation and dissociation between soluble receptors and ligands might account for most features of the…
A model system has been recently developed to study adhesion. It consists of a giant lipid bilayer vesicle with reconstituted lipo-polymers (repellers) as well as with lipo-ligands recognized by receptors covering the substrate. Adhesion in…
Many cellular processes are tightly connected to the dynamics of microtubules (MTs). While in neuronal axons MTs mainly regulate intracellular trafficking, they participate in cytoskeleton reorganization in many other eukaryotic cells,…
A microtubule (MT) is a hollow tube of approximately 25 nm diameter. The two ends of the tube are dissimilar and are designated as `plus' and `minus' ends. Motivated by the collective push and pull exerted by a bundle of MTs during…
A novel theoretical model of dynamic instability of a system of linear (1D) microtubules (MTs) in a bounded domain is introduced for studying the role of a cell edge in vivo and analyzing the effect of competition for a limited amount of…
Inside cells, cargos such as vesicles and organelles are transported by molecular motors to their correct locations via active motion on cytoskeletal tracks and passive, Brownian diffusion. During the transportation of cargos, motor-cargo…
Dynein motors exhibit catch bonding, where the unbinding rate of the motors from microtubule filaments decreases with increasing opposing load. The implications of this catch bond on the transport properties of dynein-driven cargo are yet…
In this study, a two-state mechanochemical model is presented to describe the dynamic instability of microtubules (MTs) in cells. The MTs switches between two states, assembly state and disassembly state. In assembly state, the growth of…
Catch-bonds, whereby noncovalent ligand-receptor interactions are counterintuitively reinforced by tensile forces, play a major role in cell adhesion under mechanical stress. A basic prerequisite for catch-bond formation is that…