Related papers: Entropic Tension in Crowded Membranes
A statistical mechanical theory is presented to predict the effects of macromolecular crowding on protein association equilibria, accounting for both excluded volume and attractive interactions between proteins and crowding molecules.…
We study the effect of the crowded nature of the cellular cytoplasm on the translocation of a polymer through a pore in a membrane. By systematically treating the entropic penalty due to crowding, we show that the translocation dynamics are…
We review the effects of macromolecular crowding on the folding of RNA by considering the simplest scenario when excluded volume interactions between crowding particles and RNA dominate. Using human telomerase enzyme as an example, we…
Diffusion in the crowded environments of the biological membranes or materials interfaces often involves intermittent binding to surface proteins or defects. To account for this situation we study a 2-dimensional lattice gas in a field of…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
It is now well established that the cell is a highly crowded environment. Yet, the effects of crowding on the dynamics of signaling pathways, gene regulation networks and metabolic networks are still largely unknown. Crowding can alter both…
We perform molecular dynamics simulations for a simple coarse-grained model of crambin placed inside of a softly repulsive sphere of radius R. The confinement makes folding at the optimal temperature slower and affects the folding…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
In clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME), clathrin and various adaptor proteins coat a patch of the plasma membrane, which is reshaped to form a budded vesicle. Experimental studies have demonstrated that elevated membrane tension can inhibit…
The point-curvature model for membrane protein inclusions is shown to capture multibody interactions very well. Using this model, we find that the interplay between membrane tension and multibody interactions results in a collective…
Biological membranes undergo noticeable thermal fluctuations at physiological temperatures. When two membranes approach each other, they hinder the out of plane fluctuations of the other. This hindrance leads to an entropic repulsive force…
Collective behavior of proteins on biomembranes is usually studied within the spontaneous curvature model. Here we consider an alternative phenomenological approach, which accounts consistently for partial ordering of proteins as well as…
The cytoplasm of a living cell is crowded with several macromolecules of different shapes and sizes. Molecular diffusion in such a medium becomes anomalous due to the presence of macromolecules and diffusivity is expected to decrease with…
The function of membrane-embedded proteins such as ion channels depends crucially on their conformation. We demonstrate how conformational changes in asymmetric membrane proteins may be inferred from measurements of their diffusion. Such…
Biologically important membrane channels are gated by force at attached tethers. Here, we generically characterize the non-trivial interplay of force, membrane tension, and channel deformations that can affect gating. A central finding is…
Biomembranes wrapping cells and organelles are not only the partitions that separate the insides but also dynamic fields for biological functions accompanied by membrane shape changes. In this review, we discuss the spatiotemporal patterns…
In living cells, protein-rich condensates can wet the cell membrane and surfaces of membrane-bound organelles. Interestingly, many phase-separating proteins also bind to membranes leading to a molecular layer of bound molecules. Here we…
We propose an alternative mechanism for the gating of biological membrane channels in response to membrane tension that involves a change in the slope of the membrane near the channel. Under biological membrane tensions we show that the…
Protein dynamics in cells may be different from that in dilute solutions in vitro since the environment in cells is highly concentrated with other macromolecules. This volume exclusion due to macromolecular crowding is predicted to affect…
In the framework of a phase field model of a single cell crawling on a substrate, we investigate how the properties of the cell membrane affect the shape and motility of the cell. Since the membrane influences the cell dynamics on multiple…