Alkesh Yadav et al.
A mathematical model of glycosylation in the Golgi apparatus to investigate how the fidelity of synthesising a complex glycan distribution at the plasma membrane depends on parameters such as the number of Golgi cisternae or enzyme specificity.
Research Article Updated May 31, 2022
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Physics of Living Systems
Residual force enhancement is affected more by quadriceps muscle length than stretch amplitude
Patrick Bakenecker et al.
Increasing muscle length, rather than increasing stretch amplitude, contributes more to residual force enhancement during submaximal voluntary contractions of the human quadriceps.
Research Article Updated May 24, 2022
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MedicinePhysics of Living Systems
Synchronization in renal microcirculation unveiled with high-resolution blood flow imaging
Dmitry Postnov et al.
High-resolution blood flow imaging confirms the presence of large, long-living synchronous clusters in renal microcirculation and reveals how vasoactive drugs affect synchronization properties.
Research Article Updated May 17, 2022
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Whether deforming cells behave as elastic balls (deforming at constant volume) or as sponges (loosing volume as they deform) depends on how fast they change their shape, because the cell volume depends on the tension of the plasma membrane.
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- Cell Biology
- Physics of Living Systems
Teemu P Miettinen et al.
A high-resolution approach for monitoring dry mass and the density of that dry mass on a single-cell level is developed and used to reveal that mammalian cells can lose components in mitosis due to lysosomal exocytosis.
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- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
- Physics of Living Systems
Quang D Tran et al.
Coordinated actions of two opposite flagella control speed and change direction of plant pathogen Phytophthora zoospores, in which the anterior flagellum is the main motor to generate thrust and spontaneously switch from reciprocal beating to breaststrokes to reorient its body.
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- Developmental Biology
- Physics of Living Systems
David R Shook et al.
Xenopus embryos use tissue surface tension to generate hoop-stress around the blastopore to help close it during gastrulation.
Abstract
Phytophthora species cause diseases in a large variety of plants and represent a serious agricultural threat, leading, every year, to multibillion dollar losses. Infection occurs when their biflagellated zoospores move across the soil at their characteristic high speed and reach the roots of a host plant. Despite the relevance of zoospore spreading in the epidemics of plant diseases, individual swimming of zoospores have not been fully investigated. It remains unknown about the characteristics of two opposite beating flagella during translation and turning, and the roles of each flagellum on zoospore swimming. Here, combining experiments and modeling, we show how these two flagella contribute to generate thrust when beating together, and identify the mastigonemes-attached anterior flagellum as the main source of thrust. Furthermore, we find that turning involves a complex active process, in which the posterior flagellum temporarily stops, while the anterior flagellum keeps on beating and changes its gait from sinusoidal waves to power and recovery strokes, similar to Chlamydomonas’s breaststroke, to reorient its body to a new direction. Our study is a fundamental step toward a better understanding of the spreading of plant pathogens’ motile forms, and shows that the motility pattern of these biflagellated zoospores represents a distinct eukaryotic version of the celebrated ‘run-and-tumble’ motility class exhibited by peritrichous bacteria.
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