Browse our latest Physics of Living Systems articles

Conserved contacts on cognate ligands trigger an induced fit pathway that confers selective promiscuity to PD-1, a flexible regulatory protein and promising anticancer target.

In a consumer-resource model obeying the physical requirement of flux conservation, metabolic competition between microbes yields consortia of cell types that collectively resist invasion via optimal use of resources.

An ultra-high static magnetic field changes mitotic spindle orientation in cells by exerting magnetic torques on both microtubules and chromosomes.

The Frank–Starling law of the heart and its underlying mechanism of length-dependent activation involve distinctive structural changes in both the thin and thick filaments of cardiac muscle cells.

Combining quantitative biological experiment and physical description of actomyosin cortex reveals a contractile instability in the cortex of C. elegans embryo, and its biochemical control in order to robustly drive morphogenetic events.

The geometry selection rules of dynamic Min protein patterns are determined in fully confined fluidic chambers, showing that both oscillations and running waves are derivatives of spiral rotations that are established as the majority pattern.

Autocatalytic growth of a microtubule polymer network allows extremely large egg cells to self-organize and divide rapidly.

The colony-forming choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta is capable of moving towards oxygen using logarithmic sensing of oxygen concentrations and a navigation strategy that involves random movements.

Compressing the actomyosin network by cortical flow causes filaments to align and form a constricting ring.

Recent reports on the ability of biological molecules to sense magnetic fields are found to be inconsistent with basic physical principles.