Rare events, although infrequently occurring, can have significant consequences in various fields such as epidemics, ecological dynamics, biological switches, chemical reactions, and natural disasters. Existing techniques like the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) method and transition path sampling algorithms provide insights into rare event paths, but they have limitations. The WKB method only...
Understanding how information is transmitted from the exterior to the interior of living cells is essential for developing new therapeutic strategies. Despite recent structural advances, the mechanisms that govern interactions of membrane-bound receptors with intracellular arrestin molecules at the plasma membrane remain elusive. Here [1], we combine single-molecule microscopy with molecular...
First-passage phenomena are ubiquitous in nature and at the heart of e.g., reaction kinetics, gene regulation, the foraging behavior of animals, and stock option dynamics. Whereas theoretical studies focus on predicting statistics of the first-passage time for a given process, practical applications typically aim at inferring kinetic rates, i.e. inverse mean first-passage times, from...
