Related papers: Self-Templated Nucleation in Peptide and Protein a…
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) do not possess well-defined three-dimensional structures in solution under physiological conditions. We develop all-atom, united-atom, and coarse-grained Langevin dynamics simulations for the IDP…
We propose a topological framework to study the evolution of Alzheimer's disease, the most common neurodegenerative disease. The modeling of this disease starts with the representation of the brain connectivity as a graph and the seeding of…
Homogeneous nucleation process of polyethylene (PE) is studied with full-atom molecular dynamic simulation. To account the complex shape with low symmetry and the peculiar intra-chain conformational order of polymer, we introduce a shape…
Peptide self-assembly prediction offers a powerful bottom-up strategy for designing biocompatible, low-toxicity materials for large-scale synthesis in a broad range of biomedical and energy applications. However, screening the vast sequence…
Nucleation plays a critical role in many physical and biological phenomena ranging from crystallization, melting and evaporation to the formation of clouds and the initiation of neurodegenerative diseases. However, nucleation is a…
Protein aggregation is an important field of investigation because it is closely related to the problem of neurodegenerative diseases, to the development of biomaterials, and to the growth of cellular structures such as cyto-skeleton.…
Previous self-assembly experiments on a model icosahedral plant virus have shown that, under physiological conditions, capsid proteins initially bind to the genome through an en masse mechanism and form nucleoprotein complexes in a…
Bundles of polymer filaments are responsible for the rich and unique mechanical behaviors of many biomaterials, including cells and extracellular matrices. In fibrin biopolymers, whose nonlinear elastic properties are crucial for normal…
Recent experiments with amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide suggest that formation of toxic oligomers may be an important contribution to the onset of Alzheimer's disease. The toxicity of Abeta oligomers depends on their structure, which is…
In order to understand the nuclei which develop during the course of protein folding and unfolding, we examine phase segregation of a single heteropolymer chain which occurs in equilibrium. These segregated conformations are characterized…
Short blunt-ended DNA duplexes comprising 6 to 20 base pairs self-assemble into polydisperse semi-flexible chains due to hydrophobic stacking interactions between terminal base pairs. Above a critical concentration, which depends on…
For the vast majority of naturally occurring, small, single domain proteins folding is often described as a two-state process that lacks detectable intermediates. This observation has often been rationalized on the basis of a nucleation…
We propose a two-body spherically symmetric (isotropic) potential such that particles interacting by the potential self assemble into linear semiflexible polymeric chains without branching. By suitable control of the potential parameters we…
We investigate general properties of non-deterministic self-assembly with asymmetric interactions, using a computational model and DNA tile assembly experiments. By contrasting symmetric and asymmetric interactions we show that the latter…
Fluorescence microscopy reveals that the contents of many (membrane-free) nuclear "bodies" exchange rapidly with the soluble pool whilst the underlying structure persists; such observations await a satisfactory biophysical explanation. To…
In contrast to extensively studied defects in traditional materials, we report here for the first time a systematic investigation of the formation mechanism of intrinsic defects in self-assembled peptide nanostructures. The Monte Carlo…
Bilayer membranes self-assembled from amphiphilic molecules such as lipids, surfactants and block copolymers are ubiquitous in biological and physiochemical systems. The shape and structure of bilayer membranes depend crucially on their…
How do phase separated cellular structures set their size? To elucidate this, we study the dynamics and steady states of a phase separating nucleator that is advected by the self-straining cytoskeletal network which it nucleates. We find…
The extent of coupling between the folding of a protein and its binding to a substrate varies from protein to protein. Some proteins have highly structured native states in solution, while others are natively disordered and only fold fully…
In growing active matter systems, a large collection of engineered or living autonomous units metabolize free energy and create order at different length scales as they proliferate and migrate collectively. One such example is bacterial…