Related papers: Conformational equilibria in monomeric alpha-synuc…
Polypeptides can self-assemble into hierarchically organized fibrils consisting of a stack of individually folded polypeptides driven together by hydrophobic interaction. Using a coarse grained model, we systematically studied this…
An amphiphilic nature of the surfactant-like peptides is responsible for their propensity to aggregate at the nanoscale. These peptides can be readily used for a non-covalent functionalization of nanoparticles and macromolecules. This work…
The biopolymers actin and microtubules are often in an ongoing assembling/disassembling state far from thermal equilibrium. Above a critical density this leads to spatially periodic patterns, as shown by a scaling argument and in terms of a…
The determination of the folding mechanisms of proteins is critical to understand the topological change that can propagate Alzheimer and Creutzfeld-Jakobs diseases, among others. The computational community has paid considerable attention…
It is crucial to measure position and conformational changes of a membrane-interacting protein relative to the membrane surface. This is however challenging because the thickness of a membrane is usually only about 4 nm. We developed a…
Self-assembly is a ubiquitous process in synthetic and biological systems, broadly defined as the spontaneous organization of multiple subunits (e.g. macromolecules, particles) into ordered multi-unit structures. The vast majority of…
Linear optical spectra of molecular aggregates are often approximated by classical optics methods such as the discrete-dipole approximation (DDA), coherent exciton scattering (CES), and coherent potential approximation (CPA), where the only…
The cytoskeleton protein actin assembles into large bundles when supporting stresses in the cell, but grows into a fine branched network to induce cell motion. Such self-organization processes are studied in artificial networks of…
The process of protein folding from an unfolded state to a biologically active, folded conformation is governed by many parameters e.g the sequence of amino acids, intermolecular interactions, the solvent, temperature and chaperon…
Autocatalytic fibril nucleation has recently been proposed to be a determining factor for the spread of neurodegenerative diseases, but the same process could also be exploited to amplify minute quantities of protein aggregates in a…
We solve a model that takes into account entropic barriers, frustration, and the organization of a protein-like molecule. For a chain of size $M$, there is an effective folding transition to an ordered structure. Without frustration, this…
Self-assembly is the autonomous organization of components into patterns or structures: an essential ingredient of biology and a desired route to complex organization. At equilibrium, the structure is encoded through specific interactions,…
Parkinsons disease (PD) alters cortical neural dynamics, yet reliable non-invasive electrophysiological biomarkers remain elusive. This study examined whether interpretable EEG features capturing complementary aspects of neural dynamics can…
A comparative classification scheme provides a good basis for several approaches to understand proteins, including prediction of relations between their structure and biological function. But it remains a challenge to combine a…
We investigate the effect of macromolecular crowding on protein folding, using purely repulsive crowding particles and a self-organizing polymer model of protein folding. We find that the thermodynamics of folding for typical alpha-, beta-…
The actin cytoskeleton is a key component in the machinery of eukaryotic cells, and it selfassembles out of equilibrium into a wide variety of biologically crucial structures. While the molecular mechanisms involved are well characterized,…
Living cells inherently reorganize their intracellular structures in response to mechanical cues from their environment. Among these responses, the formation of actin-based stress fibers exhibits a series of structural transitions depending…
Considerable mechanistic insight has been gained into amyloid aggregation; however, a large class of non-amyloid protein aggregates are considered 'amorphous,' and in most cases little is known about their mechanisms. Amorphous aggregation…
The native state structures of globular proteins are stable and well-packed indicating that self-interactions are favored over protein-solvent interactions under folding conditions. We use this as a guiding principle to derive the geometry…
It is well known that today nearly one in six of the world's population has to deal with neurodegenerative disorders. While a number of medical devices have been developed for the detection, prevention, and treatments of such disorders,…