Biological sciences articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Single-molecule experiments can now quantify the surface forces that compete to package tethered DNA into a protein-rich condensate — providing much-needed mechanistic insight into the phase behaviour of the entangled genome in the nucleus.

    • Marina Feric

  • Article |

    Macroscale patterns seen in biological systems such as animal coats or skin can be described by Turing’s reaction–diffusion theory. Now Turing patterns are shown to also exist in bismuth monolayers, an exemplary nanoscale atomic system.

    • Yuki Fuseya
    • , Hiroyasu Katsuno
    •  & Aharon Kapitulnik

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    In vitro experiments and theory reveal that a protein associated with DNA transcription mediates condensation of a protein–DNA phase via a first-order transition. The forces uncovered in the study may contribute to chromatin remodelling in the cell.

    • Thomas Quail
    • , Stefan Golfier
    •  & Jan Brugués

  • News & Views |

    Cells moving on microprinted tracks reveal a preference for regions that they have already visited, suggesting an update to a century of dynamical models for cell trajectories.

    • Henrik Flyvbjerg

  • Article |

    A study of the dynamics of polymer translocation through synthetic nanopores provides a direct observation of tension propagation—a non-equilibrium description of the process of unfolding that a polymer undergoes during translocation.

    • Kaikai Chen
    • , Ining Jou
    •  & Nicholas A. W. Bell

  • Letter |

    Microswimmers tend to accumulate in regions where their speed is significantly reduced, but experimental and numerical evidence now points towards a viscophobic turning mechanism that biases certain microalgae away from high-viscosity areas.

    • Michael R. Stehnach
    • , Nicolas Waisbord
    •  & Jeffrey S. Guasto

  • News & Views |

    A life-or-death choice determines the fate of reproductive cells. It has long been assumed that the choice is genetically regulated, but it now seems that the decision may instead be controlled by intracellular pressure.

    • Kacy L. Gordon

  • Article |

    Self-propelled particles are shown to orient themselves towards areas of high density, phase separating into fluid-like clusters. This behaviour is unique to active systems, forming a distinct class of motility-induced phase separation.

    • Jie Zhang
    • , Ricard Alert
    •  & Steve Granick

  • Article |

    A computational framework draws analogy with foams to offer a comprehensive picture of how cell behaviours influence fluidization in embryonic tissues, highlighting the role of tension fluctuations in regulating tissue rigidity.

    • Sangwoo Kim
    • , Marie Pochitaloff
    •  & Otger Campàs

  • Comment |

    Scientific progress has always been driven by the ability to build an instrument to answer a specific question. But spreading the news of how to replicate that tool is an evolving art, ripe for an open-source revolution.

    • Georg E. Fantner
    •  & Andrew C. Oates

  • News & Views |

    Gradients in the concentration of a solute can drive particle transport by inducing interfacial flows via imbalances in the osmotic pressure near surfaces. Now it seems that this mechanism is directing traffic on the cell membrane.

    • Lydéric Bocquet
    •  & Jérémie Palacci

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protein oscillations linked to cell division in Escherichia coli are shown to localize unrelated molecules on the cell membrane via a diffusiophoretic mechanism, in which an effective friction fosters cargo transport along the fluxes set up by the proteins.

    • Beatrice Ramm
    • , Andriy Goychuk
    •  & Petra Schwille

  • News & Views |

    The patterning dynamics of confined immiscible fluids has inspired an elegant and versatile approach to building periodic three-dimensional multi-material architectures. The technique extends to triphasic composites, three-dimensional droplet networks and even biological tissues.

    • Séverine Le Gac

  • News & Views |

    SARS, MERS and now SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to be the last emerging infections we face during our lifetimes. Tracing contacts both forward and backward through our heterogeneous populations will prove essential to future response strategies.

    • Johannes Müller
    •  & Mirjam Kretzschmar

  • Article |

    Contact tracing is key to epidemic control, but network analysis now suggests that whom you infect may not be as pertinent a question as who infected you. Biases due to contact heterogeneity reveal the efficacy of backward over forward tracing.

    • Sadamori Kojaku
    • , Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
    •  & Yong-Yeol Ahn

  • Letter |

    Cells exploit protein pattern formation to perform key processes, and do so while undergoing major shape changes. Experiments and theory together reveal a shape-adaptation mechanism capable of controlling protein dynamics even as the cell deforms.

    • Manon C. Wigbers
    • , Tzer Han Tan
    •  & Nikta Fakhri

  • News & Views |

    Biophysicists have long sought to probe the physical properties of the cell nucleus, but the sheer size of this tiny organelle puts limits on its exploration. The coarsening of biomolecular droplets looks set to give us the inside scoop.

    • Alexandra Zidovska

  • Comment |

    Physicists and biologists have different conceptions of beauty. A better appreciation of these differences may bring the disciplines closer and help develop a more integrated view of life.

    • Ben D. MacArthur

  • Article |

    Certain bacteria cells respond to the stress of long-term exposure to antibiotics by changing their shape. Single-cell experiments and modelling cast this as a mechanical feedback strategy that makes bacteria more adaptive to surviving antibiotics.

    • Shiladitya Banerjee
    • , Klevin Lo
    •  & Aaron R. Dinner

  • Comment |

    The uncertainty associated with epidemic forecasts is often simulated with ensembles of epidemic trajectories based on combinations of parameters. We show that the standard approach for summarizing such ensembles systematically suppresses critical epidemiological information.

    • Jonas L. Juul
    • , Kaare Græsbøll
    •  & Sune Lehmann

  • News & Views |

    A class of biological matter including elongated cells and filaments can be understood in the framework of active nematic liquid crystals. Within these systems, topological defects emerge and give rise to remarkable collective behaviours.

    • M.-A. Fardin
    •  & B. Ladoux

  • Letter |

    Bacteria are able to move as vast, dense collectives. Here the authors show that slow movement is key to this collective behaviour because faster bacteria cause topological defects to collide together and trap cells in place.

    • O. J. Meacock
    • , A. Doostmohammadi
    •  & W. M. Durham

  • Letter |

    Topological defects in active nematic systems such as epithelial tissues and neural progenitor cells can be associated with biological functions. Here, the authors show that defects can play a role in the layer formation of the soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus.

    • Katherine Copenhagen
    • , Ricard Alert
    •  & Joshua W. Shaevitz

  • News & Views |

    Animals seem capable of an infinite variety of movement, yet also exhibit substantial stereotypy in repeated actions. A beautiful view of worm behaviour now shows that the worm’s state evolves deterministically but is bounced chaotically between unstable periodic orbits.

    • Jane Loveless
    •  & Barbara Webb

  • Article |

    Spatiotemporal waves appear during collective cell migration and are affected by mechanical forces and biochemical signalling. Here the authors develop a biophysical model that can quantitatively account for complex mechanochemical patterns, and predict how they can be used for optimal collective migration.

    • Daniel Boocock
    • , Naoya Hino
    •  & Edouard Hannezo

  • Letter |

    Bacteria live in heterogeneous environments, so it is important to investigate their behaviour in porous media. Here the authors show that flow disorder enhances the effect of chemical gradients in micropockets in a porous medium, which then aid the transport of bacteria.

    • Pietro de Anna
    • , Amir A. Pahlavan
    •  & Ruben Juanes

  • Article |

    The unpredictability of evolution makes it difficult to deal with drug resistance because over the course of a treatment there may be mutations that we cannot predict. The authors propose to use quantum methods to control the speed and distribution of potential evolutionary outcomes.

    • Shamreen Iram
    • , Emily Dolson
    •  & Michael Hinczewski

  • Article |

    The authors investigate the relationship between the volume of malignant tumours and their metabolic processes using a large dataset of patients with cancer. They find that cancers follow a superlinear metabolic scaling law, which implies that the proliferation of cancer cells accelerates with increasing volume.

    • Víctor M. Pérez-García
    • , Gabriel F. Calvo
    •  & Ana M. García Vicente

  • News & Views |

    Everybody who has ever made a paper airplane and been disappointed as it spins out of control, crashing to the ground, knows how tricky achieving suitable trim and stability for gliding can be. But, somehow, wiggling flying snakes glide without tumbling.

    • Jim Usherwood

  • Article |

    Observations of flying snakes inform the development of a dynamical model of gliding taking undulation into account. This work suggests that aerial undulation has a different function in snakes than in other animals.

    • Isaac J. Yeaton
    • , Shane D. Ross
    •  & John J. Socha

  • Article |

    The structures of stingers of living organisms are surprisingly similar despite their vastly different lengths. Now, stingers are found to obey a unifying mechanistic principle that characterizes the stingers resistance to buckling.

    • Kaare H. Jensen
    • , Jan Knoblauch
    •  & Keunhwan Park

  • News & Views |

    Microscopic motile cilia, beating in synchrony across large scales, move the liquid lining of our lungs, protecting from infection and dirt. Surprisingly, a disordered arrangement of cilia, as observed in nature, is shown to be optimal for airway clearance.

    • Pietro Cicuta

  • Measure for Measure |

    As a unit for enzyme activity, the katal is enigmatic but struggles to find widespread acceptance. Soumitra Athavale tells its story.

    • Soumitra V. Athavale

  • Perspective |

    This Perspective argues that an approach called extreme value theory is appropriate for understanding the so-called tail risk of epidemic outbreaks, in particular by demonstrating that the distribution of fatalities due to epidemic outbreaks over the past 2500 years is fat-tailed and dominated by extreme events.

    • Pasquale Cirillo
    •  & Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Biological sciences across other nature.com journals