Biophysics articles within Nature Physics

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  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

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