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Bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) are an essential component of many biological systems, forming a functional barrier between the cell and the surrounding environment. When the membrane relaxes from a structural perturbation, the dynamics of…
The use of ultra-thin, i.e., monolayer films plays an important role for the emerging field of nano-fluidics. Since the dynamics of such films is governed by the interplay between substrate-fluid and fluid-fluid interactions, the transport…
Microalloying elements tend to segregate to the matrix-precipitate phase boundaries to reduce the interfacial energy. The segregation mechanism is emerging as a novel design strategy for developing precipitation-hardened alloys with…
Motivated by intracellular phase separation, we theoretically investigate how molecular orientation and multi-component nature affect phase behavior. We construct a minimal model for a ternary mixture composed of isotropic (I), anisotropic…
To understand mechanism of cell-membrane compartmentalization, we studied coarse-grained model systems consisting of lipid and cholesterol molecules. Cholesterol plays crucial role in lateral phase segregation in the bilayered lipid…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the spreading of binary polymer nanodroplets in a cylindrical geometry. The polymers, described by the bead-spring model, spread on a flat surface with a surface-coupled Langevin thermostat…
Continuum elastic models that account for membrane thickness variations are especially useful in the description of nanoscale deformations due to the presence of membrane proteins with hydrophobic mismatch. We show that terms involving the…
A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…
By means of lattice-based Monte Carlo simulations, we address properties of two-component lipid membranes on the experimentally relevant spatial scales of order of a micrometer and time intervals of order of a second, using DMPC/DSPC lipid…
Cellular uptake of nanoplastics is instrumental in their environmental accumulation and transfer to humans through the food chain. Despite extensive studies using spherical plastic nanoparticles, the influence of the morphological…
Random lateral translocation of lipids and proteins is a universal process on membrane surfaces. Local aggregation or organization of lipids and proteins can be induced when this lateral random diffusion is mediated by the electrostatic…
Integrative biomolecular modeling of RNA relies on structural refined collections and accurate experimental data that reflect binding and folding behavior. However, the prediction of such collections remains challenging due to the rugged…
The statistical physics and dynamics of double supported bilayers are studied theoretically. The main goal in designing double supported lipid bilayers is to obtain model systems of biomembranes: the upper bilayer is meant to be almost…
We present a phase-field model based on the Cahn-Hilliard equation to investigate the properties of phase separation in DNA nanostar systems. Leveraging a realistic free-energy functional derived from Wertheim theory, our model captures the…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
In this paper we present the results of a large-scale numerical investigation of structural properties of a model of cell membrane, simulated as a bilayer of flexible molecules in vacuum. The study was performed by carrying out extensive…
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…
We study a model for lipid-bilayer membrane vesicles exhibiting phase separation, incorporating a phase field together with membrane fluidity and bending elasticity. We prove the existence of a plethora of equilibria in the large,…
Much of our understanding of the physical properties of raft domains in biological membranes, and some insight into the mechanisms underlying their formation stem from atomistic simulations of simple model systems, especially ternary…
The phase-separation process of a binary mixture with order-parameter-dependent mobility under shear flow is numerically studied. The ordering is characterized by an alternate stretching and bursting of domains which produce oscillations in…