388 papers
Biophysics sits at the fascinating intersection where the laws of physics meet the complexity of living systems. This field uses tools like light, electricity, and mechanical forces to decode how cells move, how proteins fold, and how our senses translate the world around us. Rather than just observing biology, biophysicists measure and model life to understand the fundamental machinery that powers every organism.
On Gist.Science, we make these discoveries accessible by curating the latest preprints directly from bioRxiv. Our team processes every new submission in this category, providing both clear, plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries so readers of all backgrounds can grasp the cutting-edge science. Below are the most recent biophysics papers from bioRxiv, ready for you to explore.
This study reveals that DNA gyrase in live *E. coli* forms non-stoichiometric liquid condensates enriched with excess GyrB subunits through weak multivalent interactions, a mechanism that enhances enzyme processivity by enabling rapid rebinding to DNA and overcoming kinetic limitations to sustain the high rates of supercoiling required for transcription and replication.
This study utilizes a stochastic neural mass model fitted to MEG data to demonstrate that reduced background drive in Parkinson's disease alters cortical beta burst dynamics, while strengthened synaptic coupling can restore healthy bursting patterns, offering a computational framework for identifying therapeutic targets.
HaloUMI is an open-source Python graphical user interface that leverages physics-informed models and robust image processing to provide accurate, reproducible, and high-throughput quantification of microbial growth inhibition zones, effectively addressing limitations in existing tools by handling irregular halo shapes and correcting for lawn density variability.
This study integrates quantitative experiments on actin and myosin asymmetry in organoids with a calibrated active fluid phase-field model to successfully predict and explain how asymmetric cortical mechanics determine 3D epithelial cell geometry.
This paper investigates how microbial strain competition dynamics, including population statistics and fixation outcomes, are influenced by multi-state stochastic environmental switching with intermediate resource levels, revealing how gradual fluctuations differ from traditional binary feast-famine models.
Using a novel hydrogen-deuterium pulse-labeling approach, this study reveals that proteins employ diverse co-translational folding strategies, ranging from hierarchical domain assembly to kinetic trapping that prevents aggregation-prone intermediates, thereby ensuring robust folding during the non-equilibrium process of translation.
This paper demonstrates that a five-node model employing a causal, state-matched phase routing mechanism can effectively buffer the collective output of hyperthermal sarcomeric oscillations while preserving local power, thereby providing a design principle for coexisting active local rhythms and moderated global signals.
This study establishes a robust, standardized workflow using the fuzzy-boundary detection algorithm *measure volinterior* to quantitatively characterize the dynamic hepatitis B virus capsid assembly modulator binding pocket, providing a reproducible strategy for comparing geometric changes in dynamic protein cavities across conformational ensembles.
This study reveals that acidification and substrate binding induce a conformational shift in brain-type creatine kinase (CK-BB) from a soluble state to an open, membrane-competent dimer, enabling its recruitment to curved vesicular and actin-remodeling membranes to couple local ATP regeneration with dynamic cellular structures.
This study identifies a specific water-pinning hotspot on the fibril surface that drives the initial recruitment and in-register stacking of tau monomers during templated aggregation, revealing a dewetting-mediated "dock-and-lock" mechanism that can be blocked to disrupt disease progression.