Related papers: Template-directed biopolymerization: tape-copying …
Cryo-electron tomography enables 3D visualization of cells in a near native state at molecular resolution. The produced cellular tomograms contain detailed information about all macromolecular complexes, their structures, their abundances…
Force-driven translocation of a macromolecule through a nanopore is investigated by taking into account the monomer-pore friction as well as the "crowding" of monomers on the {\it trans} - side of the membrane which counterbalance the…
Living systems produce "persistent" copies of information-carrying polymers, in which template and copy sequences remain correlated after physically decoupling. We identify a general measure of the thermodynamic efficiency with which these…
We present a novel framework for chemical learning based on Competitive Dimerization Networks (CDNs) - systems in which multiple molecular species, e.g. proteins or DNA/RNA oligomers, reversibly bind to form dimers. We show that these…
The three-dimensional organization of chromatin is thought to play an important role in controlling gene expression. Specificity in expression is achieved through the interaction of transcription factors and other nuclear proteins with…
The volume occupied by the unconstrained genomic DNA of prokaryotes in saline solutions is thousand times larger than the cell. Moreover, it is not separated from the rest of the cell by a membrane. Nevertheless, it occupies only a small…
The structural dynamics of macromolecules is important for most microbiological processes, from protein folding to the origins of neurodegenerative disorders. Noninvasive measurements of these dynamics are highly challenging. Recently,…
Gaining access to the cell interior is fundamental for many applications, such as electrical recording, drug and biomolecular delivery. A very promising technique consists of culturing cells on nano/micro pillars. The tight adhesion and…
Everyday experience shows that cellular sheets are stiffened by the presence of a pressurized gas: from bicycle inner tubes to bubble wrap, the presence of an internal pressure increases the stiffness of otherwise floppy structures. The…
The cells and tissues that make up our body juggle contradictory mechanical demands. It is crucial for their survival to be able to withstand large mechanical loads, but it is equally crucial for them to produce forces and actively change…
Polymer translocation is a promising strategy for the next-generation DNA sequencing technologies. The use of biological and synthetic nano-pores, however, still suffers from serious drawbacks. In particular, the width of the membrane layer…
A multiscale approach is used to simulate the translocation of DNA through a nanopore. Within this scheme, the interactions of the molecule with the surrounding fluid (solvent) are explicitly taken into account. By generating polymers of…
The assembly of proteins in membranes plays a key role in many crucial cellular pathways. Despite their importance, characterizing transmembrane assembly remains challenging for experiments and simulations. Equilibrium molecular dynamics…
Loop formation in long molecules occurs many places in nature, from solutions of carbon nanotubes to polymers inside a cell. In this article, we review theoretical studies of the static and dynamic properties of polymer loops. For example,…
Cell membranes are out of thermodynamic equilibrium notably because of membrane recycling, i.e. active exchange of material with the cytosol. We propose an analytically tractable model of biomembrane predicting the effects of recycling on…
RNA co-transcriptionality, where RNA is spliced or folded during transcription from DNA templates, offers promising potential for molecular programming. It enables programmable folding of nano-scale RNA structures and has recently been…
Chromosome organisation is increasingly recognised as an essential component of genome regulation, cell fate and cell health. Within the realm of transposable elements (TEs) however, the spatial information of how genomes are folded is…
Branching architecture characterizes numerous systems, ranging from synthetic (hyper)branched polymers and biomolecules such as lignin, amylopectin, and nucleic acids to tracheal and neuronal networks. Its ubiquity reflects the many…
Recent advancements in microbiology have motivated the study of the production of nanostructures with applications such as biomedical computing and molecular robotics. One way to construct these structures is to construct branched DNA…
This paper is a completion of an earlier model proposed by us. In the model different memories are attached at cell surface determinants which are the result of DNA recombination. Our earlier experiments strongly suggest that DNA…