Related papers: Membrane proteins and proteomics: Love is possible…
Biological functions stem from coordinated interactions among proteins, nucleic acids and small molecules. Mass spectrometry technologies for reliable, high throughput single-cell proteomics will add a new modality to genomics and enable…
We consider a model of a biomembrane with attached proteins. The membrane is represented by a near spherical continuous surface and attached proteins are described as discrete rigid structures which attach to the membrane at a finite number…
Engineering simple, artificial models of living cells allows synthetic biologists to study cellular functions under well-controlled conditions. Reconstituting multicellular behaviors with synthetic cell-mimics is still a challenge because…
Central to understanding membrane bound cell signaling is to quantify how the membrane ultra-structure consisting of transient spatial domains modulates signaling and how the signaling influences this ultra-structure. Yet, measuring the…
Liposomes that achieve a heterogeneous and spatially organized surface through phase separation have been recognized to be a promising platform for delivery purposes. However, their design and optimization through experimentation can be…
We consider an electrolyte solution confined by semipermeable membranes in contact with a salt-free solvent. Membranes are uncharged, but since small counter-ions leak-out into infinite salt-free reservoirs, we observe a distance-dependent…
A flat membrane with given shape is displayed; two points in the membrane are randomly selected; the probability that the separation between the points have a specified value is sought. A simple method to evaluate the probability density is…
Advances in experimental techniques and in theoretical models have improved our understanding of protein crystallization. But they have also left open questions regarding the protein phase behavior and self-assembly kinetics, such as why…
Recent experiments by Y. Gambin et al. [PNAS 103, 2098 (2006)] have called into question the applicability of the Saffman-Delbruck diffusivity for proteins embedded in the lipid bilayers. We present a simple argument to account for this…
Biomarker discovery for clinical purposes is one of the major areas in which proteomics is used. However, despite considerable effort, the successes have been relatively scarce. In this perspective paper, we try to highlight and analyze the…
The interaction of fluid membranes with a scaffold, which can be a planar surface or a more complex structure, is intrinsic to a number of systems - from artificial supported bilayers and vesicles to cellular membranes. In principle, these…
Recent work has highlighted roles for thermodynamic phase behavior in diverse cellular processes. Proteins and nucleic acids can phase separate into three-dimensional liquid droplets in the cytoplasm and nucleus and the plasma membrane of…
Membrane curvature sensing is essential for a diverse range of biological processes. Recent experiments have revealed that a single nanometer-sized septin protein can distinguish between membrane-coated glass beads of one micron and three…
The spatial organization of complex biochemical reactions is essential for the regulation of cellular processes. Membrane-less structures called foci containing high concentrations of specific proteins have been reported in a variety of…
An all-atom model of proteins is used to show that the same sequence of amino acids can have many alternative structures, that are very distant from, and that can be as stable as, the corresponding native structure. Such alternative…
It is shown that a small subset of modes which are likely to be involved in protein functional motions of large amplitude can be determined by retaining the most robust normal modes obtained using different protein models. This result…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids diffuse in a highly crowded and heterogeneous landscape, where aggregates and dense domains of proteins or lipids obstruct the path of diffusing molecules. In general, hindered motion gives rise to…
Gene expression and regulation rely on an apparently finely tuned set of reactions between some proteins and DNA. Such DNA-binding proteins have to find specific sequences on very long DNA molecules and they mostly do so in absence of any…
The internal dynamics of strongly interacting systems and that of biomolecules such as proteins display several important analogies, despite the huge difference in their characteristic energy and length scales. For example, in all such…
The adhesion of biological membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. Central questions are how the binding kinetics of these proteins is affected by the membranes and by the membrane anchoring…