Biological sciences articles within Nature Physics

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  • News & Views |

    Elasticity-driven synchronization in active solids has been predicted theoretically and was recently realized in a synthetic system. A biological realization is now demonstrated in a bacterial biofilm.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • , Tal Cohen
    •  & Jing Yan

  • Letter |

    A continuum active solid system is realized in a bacterial biofilm. Self-sustained elastic waves are observed, and two modes of collective motion with a sharp transition between them are identified.

    • Haoran Xu
    • , Yulu Huang
    •  & Yilin Wu

  • Research Briefing |

    Organs in the human body have complex networks of fluid-filled tubes and loops with different geometries and topologies. By studying self-organized, synthetic tissues, the link between topological transitions and the emergence of tissue architecture was revealed.

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    During development, tissues with complex topology emerge from collections of cells with simple geometry. This process in neuroepithelial organoids is governed by two topologically distinct modes of epithelial fusion.

    • Keisuke Ishihara
    • , Arghyadip Mukherjee
    •  & Frank Jülicher

  • News & Views |

    Watching a single protein molecule fold for days reveals rare excursions into configurations that were previously hidden from observation by high energy barriers.

    • Krishna Neupane
    •  & Michael T. Woodside

  • News & Views |

    Embryonic development is characterized by large cellular flows. The cells retain their positional information despite these flows thanks to an unjamming of cells that pull along jammed cells in a way that preserves initial tissue patterning.

    • Sham Tlili

  • News & Views |

    Experiments with small flocks of sheep show intermittent collective motion events driven by random leaders that guide the group. A model reveals information pooling capabilities, suggesting a mechanism for swarm intelligence.

    • Cristián Huepe

  • Article |

    Cervix and breast carcinomas are highly heterogeneous in their mechanical properties across scales. This heterogeneity provides the tumour with stability and room for cell motility.

    • Thomas Fuhs
    • , Franziska Wetzel
    •  & Josef A. Käs

  • Comment |

    Declaring a cosmopolitan right to scientific progress risks perpetuating the inequities it aims to overcome. Instead, science ought to be reimagined in a way that directly addresses its links to nationalist projects and harmful capitalist practices.

    • Matthew Sample
    •  & Irina Cheema

  • Article |

    Cilia are composed of cytoskeletal filaments and molecular motors and are characterized by a wave-like motion. Here the authors show that this motion is reconstituted in vitro from the self-assembly of polymerizing actin filaments and myosin motors.

    • Marie Pochitaloff
    • , Martin Miranda
    •  & Pascal Martin

  • News & Views |

    Cells can sense the mechanical properties of their environment. By adjusting the ruffling of their membranes, cells respond to different viscosities of their surrounding liquid medium.

    • Laura M. Faure
    •  & Pere Roca-Cusachs

  • Article |

    Living cells change their behaviour in response to the viscosity of the medium surrounding them. An in vitro study shows that cells spread wider and move faster in a highly viscous medium, provided they have an actively ruffling lamellipodium.

    • Matthew Pittman
    • , Ernest Iu
    •  & Yun Chen

  • News & Views |

    Plasmodium sporozoites can move in rotating vortices owing to their chiral shape and mechanical flexibility, revealing important physical aspects of collective motion.

    • Iva M. Tolić
    •  & Isabelle Tardieux

  • News & Views |

    Biomolecular condensates grow in busy cellular environments. Statistical image analysis of heterogeneous structures now enables quantification of macromolecular interactions between condensates and cytoskeletal filaments.

    • Tina Wiegand
    •  & Arjun Narayanan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many organelles in the cell are not encapsulated in a membrane—they are liquid-like domains formed through phase separation. The liquid-like nature of such domains leads to adhesive interactions between the cytoskeleton filaments and organelles.

    • Thomas J. Böddeker
    • , Kathryn A. Rosowski
    •  & Eric R. Dufresne

  • News & Views |

    Individual cilia are typically attached to cell surfaces, where they sweep back and forth. A new study charts the behavioural space of the beating patterns of cilia isolated from the cell.

    • Kirsty Y. Wan

  • Letter |

    Rheological measurements combined with a fully calibrated model show that growth-induced pressure increases macromolecular crowding, inhibiting protein expression and cell growth.

    • Baptiste Alric
    • , Cécile Formosa-Dague
    •  & Morgan Delarue

  • News & Views |

    • Bart Verberck

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    A DNA-binding protein condenses on DNA via a switch-like transition. Surface condensation occurs at preferential DNA locations suggesting collective sequence readout and enabling sequence-specificity robustness with respect to protein concentration.

    • Jose A. Morin
    • , Sina Wittmann
    •  & Stephan W. Grill

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The beating of motile cilia arises from the collective action of hundreds of proteins. A study of the dynamics of cilia under different environmental and genetic conditions shows that the space of beating variations is low-dimensional.

    • Veikko F. Geyer
    • , Jonathon Howard
    •  & Pablo Sartori

  • Letter |

    As tissues grow, a small fraction of cells can give rise to a large fraction of the tissue. A model borrowed from forest fires suggests that this can occur spontaneously in development as a collective property of the cell interaction network.

    • Jasmin Imran Alsous
    • , Jan Rozman
    •  & Stanislav Y. Shvartsman

  • Article |

    The cell cortex stiffens during cell division, facilitating the necessary shape changes. Microrheology measurements now reveal that the rest of the cell interior actually softens, in a process that probably involves two key biomolecules trading roles.

    • Sebastian Hurst
    • , Bart E. Vos
    •  & Timo Betz

  • 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

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