Browse our latest Physics of Living Systems articles

Net-winged midge larvae use suction organs covered in spine-like cuticular protrusions to generate powerful attachment on wet and rough surfaces.

Bacterial population can coordinate individuals of different phenotypes by spatial modulation of their run-and-tumble behaviors, resulting in collective group migration with an ordered structure of phenotypes.

Fluorescence fluctuation spectroscopy is implemented for detection of up to four molecular species, allowing users to quantify molecular interactions and stoichiometry of multicomponent complexes in live cells, in a wide range of biological processes, from membrane signaling to viral assembly.

A parsimonious biophysical model correctly predicts the conserved expression stoichiometry of core bacterial mRNA translation factors, providing intuitive and quantitative design principles for in vivo pathway construction.

Quantitative FRET imaging in moving C. elegans shows that stretch-unfolding of twitchin kinase occurs in the active muscle, whereby mechanical activity titrates the signaling pathway of this cytoskeletal kinase.

A theory of gut bacterial aggregation produces a cluster size distribution that matches that of several strains observed in zebrafish, suggesting principles generally applicable to the vertebrate gut.

Irreversible differentiation into somatic cells is evolutionarily optimal if changing cell phenotype is costly, a few somatic cells already improve the organism's performance, and the organism is large enough.

High-throughput and ultra-stable magnetic tweezers reveal that Remdesivir induces a long-lived backtrack pause upon incorporation by the coronavirus polymerase, and SARS-CoV-2 is able to evade interferon-induced antiviral ddhCTP.

Latest advances in biological timing studies substantiate an emerging concept of autonomous clocks that are normally entrained by the cell cycle and/or the circadian clock to run in synchrony, but have evolved to run independently to regulate different cellular events.

Respiratory syncytial virus produces filamentous particles that change shape when the viral matrix detaches from the viral membrane, and this change in shape results in enhanced deposition of complement proteins, with potential downstream consequences.