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The phase behavior of charged rods in the presence of inter-rod linkers is studied theoretically as a model for the equilibrium behavior underlying the organization of actin filaments by linker proteins in the cytoskeleton. The presence of…
We illuminate the many-body effects underlying the structure, formation, and dissolution of cellular adhesion domains in the presence and absence of forces. We consider mixed Glauber-Kawasaki dynamics of a two-dimensional model of…
Adhesion-independent migration is a prominent mode of cell motility in confined environments, yet the physical principles that guide such movement remain incompletely understood. We present a phase-field model for simulating the motility of…
Proteins often regulate their activities via allostery - or action at a distance - in which the binding of a ligand at one binding site influences the affinity for another ligand at a distal site. Although less studied than in proteins,…
We present results of testing of the ability of eleven popular scoring functions to predict native docked positions using a recently developed method [1] for estimation the entropy contributions of relative motions to protein-ligand binding…
The accurate description of electrons at extreme density and temperature is of paramount importance for, e.g., the understanding of astrophysical objects and inertial confinement fusion. In this context, the dynamic structure factor…
During development, the mammalian brain differentiates into specialized regions with distinct functional abilities. While many factors contribute to functional specialization, we explore the effect of neuronal density on the development of…
Conformational barcodes tag functional sites of proteins, and are decoded by interacting molecules transmitting the incoming signal. Conformational barcodes are modified by all co-occurring allosteric events induced by post-translational…
Cells use surface receptors to estimate the concentration of external ligands. Limits on the accuracy of such estimations have been well studied for pairs of ligand and receptor species. However, the environment typically contains many…
The letter resolves the long standing debate as to the proper time scale ($<\tau>$) of the onset of the immunological synapse (IS) bond, the non-covalent chemical bond defining the immune pathways involving T-cells and antigen presenting…
Protein aggregation is of great importance in biology, e.g., in amyloid fibrillation. The aggregation processes that occur at the cellular scale must be highly stochastic in nature because of the statistical number fluctuations that arise…
An accurate and efficient characterization of the polyelectrolyte properties for cytoskeleton filaments are key to the molecular understanding of electrical signal propagation, bundle and network formation, as well as other relevant…
Actin is a globular protein which forms long filaments in the eukaryotic cytoskeleton, whose roles in cell function include structural support, contractile activity to intracellular signalling. We model actin filaments as two chains of…
Cells that collide with each other repolarize away from contact, in a process called contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), which is necessary for correct development of the embryo. CIL can occur even when cells make a micron-scale contact…
T-cells are a crucial subset of white blood cells that play a central role in the immune system. When T-cells bind antigens, it leads to cell activation and the induction of an immune response. If T-cells are activated by antigens in vivo…
B cells receptor (BCR) signaling in response to membrane-bound antigen increases with antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. We use computational modeling to show that B cell affinity discrimination requires that…
Interactions between a protein and a ligand are often accompanied by a redistribution of the population of thermally accessible conformations. This dynamic response of the protein's functional energy landscape enables a protein to modulate…
Cells make use of semi-flexible biopolymers such as actin or intermediate filaments to control their local viscoelastic response by dynamically adjusting the concentration and type of cross-linker molecules. The microstructure of the…
During the initiation stage of protein synthesis, a ribosomal initiation complex (IC) is assembled on a messenger RNA (mRNA) template. In bacteria, the speed and accuracy of this assembly process are regulated by the complementary…
B cells signaling in response to antigen is proportional to antigen affinity, a process known as affinity discrimination. Recent research suggests that B cells can acquire antigen in membrane-bound form on the surface of antigen-presenting…