Browse our latest Physics of Living Systems articles

Specific to muscles and essential for their development, desmin is revealed to be fundamental to the mechanics and shape maintenance of model muscle tissue even in early differentiating and unorganized systems through an integrated magnetic tensiometer approach.

The method presented here allows researchers to retrieve accurate and reproducible biomechanical properties of mouse cartilage.

Super-resolution microscopy and single particle tracking analysis of Piezo1 in red blood cells demonstrate its ability to sense membrane curvature, consistent with a force-through-membrane mechanism of channel mechanosensation in these cells.

Damage and repair for both aging mice and humans declined with age, exhibited very long timescales that varied across health attributes, and were differently affected by interventions.

A combination of mathematical modeling and live-cell imaging reveals a strategy for the rational control over cell electrophysiology though modulation of ion channel expression.

Tracking of all cells in intestinal organoids crypts to fully reconstruct cell lineages reveals that proliferative behavior is highly symmetric between sisters cells, while simulations show that this observed symmetry minimizes random fluctuations in cell proliferation, thereby ensuring homeostasis.

Investigation of regulatory network topology reveals latent design principles of multistable phenotypic landscape.

A droplet microfluidics approach to stably trap and phenotype individual micron-sized algae reveals their distinct but stereotyped movement patterns and how they respond in real time to local environmental cues, including novel boundary circling behaviour under strong confinement.

Human performance in a group synchronization task, described as a temporal version of the wisdom of crowds, can be understood as a phenomenon of the same nature as collective dynamics in swarming animals.

The ParABS system positions plasmids precisely within the cell but just below the threshold for oscillatory dynamics.