Related papers: The crystallization of asymmetric patchy models fo…
Diffusion rates through a membrane can be asymmetric, if the diffusing particles are spatially extended and the pores in the membrane have asymmetric structure. This phenomenon is demonstrated here via a deterministic simulation of a…
A fundamental goal of research in molecular biology is to understand protein structure. Protein crystallography is currently the most successful method for determining the three-dimensional (3D) conformation of a protein, yet it remains…
Assembly of protein complexes like virus shells, the centriole, the nuclear pore complex or the actin cytoskeleton is strongly determined by their spatial structure. Moreover it is becoming increasingly clear that the reversible nature of…
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
We study the effect of membrane proteins on the shape, composition and thermodynamic stability of the surrounding membrane. When the coupling between membrane composition and curvature is strong enough the nearby composition and shape both…
Cooperativity is a hallmark of proteins, many of which show a modular architecture comprising discrete structural domains. Detecting and describing dynamic couplings between structural regions is difficult in view of the many-body nature of…
Folding and aggregation of proteins, the interaction between proteins and membranes, as well as the adsorption of organic soft matter to inorganic solid substrates belong to the most interesting challenges in understanding structure and…
We calculate statistical properties of amorphous polymer chains between crystalline lamellae by self-consistent field model simulations. In our model, an amorphous subchain is modelled as a polymer chain of which ends are grafted onto the…
The cell membrane is inherently asymmetric and heterogeneous in its composition, a feature that is crucial for its function. Using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, the physical properties of a 3-component asymmetric mixed lipid…
We report theoretical and numerical evaluations of the phase diagram for a model of patchy particles. Specifically we study hard-spheres whose surface is decorated by a small number f of identical sites ("sticky spots'') interacting via a…
The phase diagram of nuclear matter is quite rich - it shows such phenomena as phase-transitions, formation of condensates, clustering, etc. From the analysis of the spinodal instability, one can learn about the region of liquid-gas…
The equilibrium distributions of the different pasta geometries and their linear sizes are calculated from the mean field Gibbs energy functional in symmetric nuclear matter at finite temperature. The average sizes and shapes coincide…
Quantum interference between multiple pathways in molecular photodissociation often results in angular momentum polarization of atomic products and this can give deep insight into fundamental physical processes. For dissociation of diatomic…
A geometric analysis of protein folding, which complements many of the models in the literature, is presented. We examine the process from unfolded strand to the point where the strand becomes self-interacting. A central question is how it…
We develop a simple correspondence between hydrophobic surface topology of globular proteins and and an effective protein-protein adhesiveness parameter of the Baxter type. We discuss within this framework analytical interpretation of the…
The surface curvature of membranes, interfaces, and substrates plays a crucial role in shaping the self-assembly of particles adsorbed on these surfaces. However, little is known about the interplay between particle anisotropy and surface…
Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of as few as three lipid species can phase separate into small-scale lipid domains with stripes and dots patterns. These patterns have been experimentally characterized in terms of how their size…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the crystallization pathways of two exemplary systems that form the same complex crystal structure but differ fundamentally in the nature of their particle interactions. One system is…
We study the structural and thermodynamic properties of patchy particle liquids, with a special focus on the role of "color", i.e. specific interactions between individual patches. A possible experimental realization of such "chromatic"…
These lectures will address two questions. Is there a simple variational principle underlying the existence of secondary motifs in the native state of proteins? Is there a general approach which can qualitatively capture the salient…