相关论文: Solvent-induced organization: A physical model of …
Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…
Living cells adapt and respond actively to the mechanical properties of their environment. In addition to biochemical mechanotransduction, evidence exists for a myosin-dependent, purely mechanical sensitivity to the stiffness of the…
This work presents the development, analysis and numerical simulations of a biophysical model for 3D cell deformation and movement, which couples biochemical reactions and biomechanical forces. We propose a mechanobiochemical model which…
The one-dimensional crawling movement of a cell is considered in this theoretical study. Our active gel model shows that for a cell with weakly mechanosensitive adhesion complexes, as myosin contractility increases, a cell starts to move at…
Colloidal aggregation could be implemented in various fields ranging from purely colloidal thermodynamics to protein interactions, their stability, and maybe folding. Indeed, colloidal aggregation is closely linked to the so-called…
We present a simple model of protein folding dynamics that captures key qualitative elements recently seen in all-atom simulations. The goals of this theory are to serve as a simple formalism for gaining deeper insight into the physical…
Protein folding produces characteristic and functional three-dimensional structures from unfolded polypeptides or disordered coils. The emergence of extraordinary complexity in the protein folding process poses astonishing challenges to…
The dynamics of active viscoelastic surfaces plays an important role in biological systems. One prominent example is the actin cortex, a thin bio-polymer sheet underneath the outer membrane of biological cells which combines active…
Encapsulation of chemicals using polymer membranes enables to control their transport and delivery for applications such as agrochemistry or detergency. To rationalize the design of polymer capsules, it is necessary to understand how the…
We propose a simple approach, based on the minimization of the total (entropic plus unfolding) energy of a two-state system, describing the stretch-induced unfolding of macromolecules (proteins, silks, nanopolymers, DNA/RNA). The model is…
In a similar way in which the folding of single--domain proteins provide an important test in the study of self--organization, the folding of homodimers constitute a basic challenge in the quest for the mechanisms which are at the basis of…
Modeling the couplings between active particles often neglects the possible many-body effects that control the propulsion mechanism. Accounting for such effects requires the explicit modeling of the molecular details at the origin of…
In this paper we report, clarify and broaden various recent efforts to complement the chemistry-centered models of force generation in muscles by mechanics-centered models. The physical mechanisms of interest can be grouped into two…
The results of minimal model calculations suggest that the stability and the kinetic accessibility of the native state of small globular proteins are controlled by few "hot" sites. By mean of molecular dynamics simulations around the native…
In this paper, we introduce an approach to the protein folding problem from the point of view of statistical physics. Protein folding is a stochastic process by which a polypeptide folds into its characteristic and functional 3D structure…
We discuss recent theoretical developments in the study of simple lattice models of proteins. Such models are designed to understand general features of protein structures and mechanism of folding. Among the topics covered are (i) the use…
The possibilities to tune the structure of solid like material resulting from arrested spinodal decomposition is investigated using a system composed of lysozyme, a globular protein, dispersed in a water solution as model system for…
Cell motility in higher organisms (eukaryotes) is crucial to biological functions ranging from wound healing to immune response, and also implicated in diseases such as cancer. For cells crawling on hard surfaces, significant insights into…
Observations of single epidermal cells on flat adhesive substrates have revealed two distinct morphological and functional states, namely a non-migrating symmetric unpolarized state and a migrating asymmetric polarized state. These states…
Specific lipid environments are necessary for the establishment of protein signalling platforms in membranes, yet their origin has been highly debated. We present a continuum, exactly solvable model of protein induced local demixing of…