Biophysics articles within Nature Physics

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  • Letter |

    Buckling is often regarding as a form of mechanical failure to be avoided. High-speed video microscopy and mechanical stability theory now show, however, that bacteria use such processes to their advantage. Cells propelled with a single flagellum change direction with a flick-like motion that exploits a buckling instability.

    • Kwangmin Son
    • , Jeffrey S. Guasto
    •  & Roman Stocker

  • News & Views |

    Technologies aimed at single-molecule resolution of non-equilibrium systems increasingly require sophisticated new ways of thinking about thermodynamics. An elegant extension to standard fluctuation theory grants access to the kinetic intermediate states of these systems — as DNA-pulling experiments now demonstrate.

    • Jan Liphardt

  • Article |

    Short-lived kinetic states between equilibria are difficult to access experimentally, despite being crucial in many dynamical processes. Single-molecule experiments demonstrate that an extended fluctuation relation allows extraction of the free energies of these metastable states under non-equilibrium conditions.

    • Anna Alemany
    • , Alessandro Mossa
    •  & Felix Ritort

  • News & Views |

    Cells migrate en masse to generate and renew tissue — but inadequate resolution and incompatible timescales obscure the mechanism behind this migration. A unique approach reveals that stress mediates collective motion by propagating in a wave from the leading edge to the population centre.

    • Manuel Théry

  • Article |

    Tissue growth and regrowth rely on the collective migration of sheets of cells. Gradients in tension established through intercellular forces guide this migration, but the mechanism driving the gradients has remained unclear. Innovative experiments now reveal their origin—in a mechanical wave set up by sequential cell reinforcement and fluidization.

    • Xavier Serra-Picamal
    • , Vito Conte
    •  & Xavier Trepat

  • Article |

    There is growing evidence that quantum coherence enhances energy transfer through individual photosynthetic light-harvesting protein complexes. This idea is now extended to complicated networks of such proteins and chemical reaction centres. A mathematical analysis reveals that coherence lengths up to 5 nm are possible.

    • A. K. Ringsmuth
    • , G. J. Milburn
    •  & T. M. Stace

  • News & Views |

    Biological systems can adapt to changes in their environment over a wide range of conditions, but responding quickly and accurately is energetically costly. A study pins down the relationship between energy, speed and accuracy.

    • Pieter Rein ten Wolde

  • News & Views |

    Migrating cells are capable of actively opposing external forces. A study of the polymers that mediate cell motility indicates that they effect this response by branching where bent under force.

    • Anders E. Carlsson

  • Article |

    It is well known that organisms profit from adapting to their environment. A study of stochastic adaptation dynamics shows that this comes at the expense of adaptive speed and accuracy—providing a framework for understanding adaptation in noisy biological systems.

    • Ganhui Lan
    • , Pablo Sartori
    •  & Yuhai Tu

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