Browse our latest Physics of Living Systems articles

A colloid fractal cluster model provides a quantitative link between the atomistic features of an intrinsically disordered polypeptide and the spatial organization of the biomolecular condensate it forms.

Drosophila larvae manipulated by an automated system can be observed for 30+ hr, and new analysis methods of long-timescale trajectories reveal behavioral features previously inaccessible, such as a bimodal distribution of thermal navigation efficiency in individual animals.

Spontaneous contractions allow shedding of the fluid boundary layer and thereby stabilize microbiota.

A multiplexed microfluidic device was developed to facilitate high-throughput screening of bacterial chemotaxis on a single chip and demonstrated across a range of microbes, chemostimulants, and chemical gradient conditions.

Zebrafish have a physiological time-window of 1 hr for breaking left-right symmetry and are highly sensitive to the left-right organizer anterior fluid mechanics rather than to the nature of its fluid content.

Live imaging and physical perturbations of spindles with unfocused poles reveal that mammalian spindle length emerges locally from kinetochore-fibers, but that global cues from focused spindle poles are needed to coordinate k-fibers across space and time and accurately segregate chromosomes.

Chromatin-binding proteins regulate the effective solvent quality experienced by chromatin and impact global chromatin organization in the nucleus.

A theoretical model explains how protein density and nuclear to cell volume ratio are maintained during cell growth, discusses conditions under which this breaks down, and highlights the importance of metabolites, mainly amino acids such as glutamate, in this homeostasis.

As a cell changes size during the cell cycle, why does its density remain constant?

The spatial organization of pathogenic bacteria into microcolonies can be shaped by the stiffness of the substrate that they colonize, via modifications of the bacterial motility.