Related papers: Membrane proteins and proteomics: Love is possible…

Multi-component membranes such as ternary mixtures of lipids and cholesterol can exhibit coexistence regions between two liquid phases. When such membranes adhere to a corrugated substrate, the phase separation process strongly depends on…

From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function.…

Pleated membrane filters, which offer larger surface area to volume ratios than unpleated membrane filters, are used in a wide variety of applications. However, the performance of the pleated filter, as characterized by a flux-throughput…

The dynamics of a membrane is a coupled system comprising a moving elastic surface and an incompressible membrane fluid. We will consider a reduced elastic surface model, which involves the evolution equations of the moving surface, the…

Human physiology and pathology arise from the coordinated interactions of diverse single cells. However, analyzing single cells has been limited by the low sensitivity and throughput of analytical methods. DNA sequencing has recently made…

Interactions between biomolecules, electrons and protons are essential to many fundamental processes sustaining life. It is therefore of interest to build mathematical models of these bioelectrical processes not only to enhance…

We review theoretical approaches, experiments and numerical simulations that have been recently proposed to investigate the folding problem in single-domain proteins. From a theoretical point of view, we emphasize the energy landscape…

The mechanisms of cold- and pressure-denaturation of proteins are matter of debate and are commonly understood as due to water-mediated interactions. Here we study several cases of proteins, with or without a unique native state, with or…

The adhesion of cell membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. In this article, we review recent results from simulations and theory that lead to novel insights on how the binding equilibrium…

Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are fundamental computational tools for the study of proteins and their free energy landscapes. However, sampling protein conformational changes through MD simulations is challenging due to the relatively…

A way forward for high throughput fabrication of microcapsules with uniform size and mechanical properties was reported irrespective of the kinetic process of shell assembly. Microcapsules were produced using lab-scale emulsification…

Some of the key proteins essential for important cellular processes are capable of recruiting other proteins from the cytosol to phospholipid membranes. The physical basis for this cooperativity of binding is, surprisingly, still unclear.…

The next step in the understanding of the genome organization, after the determination of complete sequences, involves proteomics. The proteome includes the whole set of protein-protein interactions, and two recent independent studies have…

A physical scenario accounting for the existence of size-limited submicrometric domains in cell membranes is proposed. It is based on the numerical investigation of the counterpart, in lipidic membranes where proteins are diffusing, of the…

Molecular dynamics (MD) has become a powerful tool for studying biophysical systems, due to increasing computational power and availability of software. Although MD has made many contributions to better understanding these complex…

Hydrogen bonds are a common feature in protein folding and aggregation. Due to their chemical peculiarities in terms of strength and directionality, a particular attention must be paid to the definition of the hydrogen bond potential…

We consider the hydrodynamics of lipid bilayers containing transmembrane proteins of arbitrary shape. This biologically-motivated problem is relevant to the cell membrane, whose fluctuating dynamics play a key role in phenomena ranging from…

The interpretation electrical phenomena in biomembranes is usually based on the assumption that the experimentally found discrete ion conduction events are due to a particular class of proteins called ion channels while the lipid membrane…

This article is the second of a three-part series that derives a self-consistent theoretical framework of the electromechanics of arbitrarily curved lipid membranes. Existing continuum theories commonly treat lipid membranes as strictly…

We introduce a simulation strategy to consistently couple continuum biomembrane dynamics to the motion of discrete biological macromolecules residing within or on the membrane. The methodology is used to study the diffusion of integral…