Related papers: Effect of macromolecular crowding on the rate of d…
We study a model for unimolecular reaction on a supported catalyst including reactant diffusion and desorption, using analytical methods and scaling concepts. For rapid reactions, enhancing surface diffusion or increasing particle size…
The effect of conformational fluctuations of modular macromolecules, such as enzymes, on their diffusion properties is addressed using a simple generic model of an asymmetric dumbbell made of two hydrodynamically coupled subunits. It is…
Cell division, aging, and stress recovery triggers spatial reorganization of cellular components in the cytoplasm, including membrane bound organelles, with molecular changes in their compositions and structures. However, it is not clear…
Macromolecular crowding in living biological cells effects subdiffusion of larger biomolecules such as proteins and enzymes. Mimicking this subdiffusion in terms of random walks on a critical percolation cluster, we here present a case…
We show that the force generated by active enzyme molecules are strong enough to influence the dynamics of their surroundings under artificial crowded environments. We measured the behavior of polymer microparticles in a…
The looping of polymers such as DNA is a fundamental process in the molecular biology of living cells, whose interior is characterised by a high degree of molecular crowding. We here investigate in detail the looping dynamics of flexible…
Enzymes within biochemical pathways are often colocalized, yet the consequences of specific spatial enzyme arrangements remain poorly understood. We study the impact of enzyme arrangement on reaction efficiency within a reaction-diffusion…
Metabolic scaling is one of the most important patterns in biology. Theory explaining the 3/4-power size-scaling of biological metabolic rate does not predict the non-linear scaling observed for smaller life forms. Here we present a new…
Microtubules are an essential physical building block of cellular systems. They are organized using specific crosslinkers, motors, and influencers of nucleation and growth. With the addition of anti-parallel crosslinkers, microtubule…
Living systems at the sub-cellular, cellular, and multi-cellular level are often crowded systems that contain active particles. The active motion of these particles can also propel passive particles, which typically results in enhanced…
Intracellular transport of vesicular cargos, organelles, and other macromolecules is an essential process to move large items through a crowded, and inhomogeneous cellular environment. In an effort to dissect the fundamental effects of…
Macromolecular crowding can influence polymer shapes, which is important for understanding the thermodynamic stability of polymer solutions and the structure and function of biopolymers (proteins, RNA, DNA) under confinement. We explore the…
We study the role of active coupling on the transport properties of homogeneously charged macromolecules in an infinitely dilute solution. An enzyme becomes actively bound to a segment of the macromolecule, exerting an electrostatic force…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…
The role of macromolecular crowding in living systems is widely appreciated, but artificial crowders used to model these effects in vitro are often inadequately characterized. In this work, we examine density, viscosity, polymer…
In the cell, protein complexes form relying on specific interactions between their monomers. Excluded volume effects due to molecular crowding would lead to correlations between molecules even without specific interactions. What is the…
We derive the boundary condition for a subdiffusive particle interacting with a reactive boundary with finite reaction rate. Molecular crowding conditions, that are found to cause subdiffusion of larger molecules in biological cells, are…
Inside every living cell is the cytoplasm: a fluid mixture of thousands of different macromolecules, predominantly proteins. This mixture is where most of the biochemistry occurs that enables living cells to function, and it is perhaps the…
We investigated the energy transfer from active enzymes to their surroundings in crowded environments by measuring the diffusion of passive microscopic tracers in active solutions of ficoll and glycerol. Despite observing lower rates of…
Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the droplet arrangement and their sizes. To understand this behavior,…