Related papers: Aggregate geometry in amyloid fibril nucleation
Pebble-bed nuclear reactor technology, which is currently being revived around the world, raises fundamental questions about dense granular flow in silos. A typical reactor core is composed of graphite fuel pebbles, which drain very slowly…
The structure of membrane-active peptides and their interaction with lipid bilayers can be studied in oriented lipid membranes deposited on solid substrates. Such systems are desirable for a number of surface-sensitive techniques. Here we…
We propose here an asymptotic solution defining the optimal compliance distribution for a fibrillar adhesive to obtain maximum theoretical strength. This condition corresponds to that of equal load sharing (ELS) among fibrils, i.e. all the…
The lysyl oxidase (LOX) enzyme that catalyses cross-link formation during the assembly of collagen fibrils in vivo is too large to diffuse within assembled fibrils, and so is incompatible with a fully equilibrium mechanism for fibril…
Semiflexible polymers are ubiquitous in natural and artificial systems, where their intermediate rigidity gives rise to rich structural and dynamical behavior. Confinement plays a central role in these behaviors, as spatial restrictions can…
Microgels are colloidal-scale particles individually made of crosslinked polymer networks that can swell and deswell in response to external stimuli, such as changes to temperature or pH. Despite a large amount of experimental activities on…
Building on the results of our computer simulation (ArXiv cond-mat/0503573)we develop a theoretical description of the motion of a bead, embedded in a network of semiflexible polymers, and responding to an applied force. The theory reveals…
The structural reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is facilitated through the action of motor proteins that crosslink the actin filaments and transport them relative to each other. Here, we present a combined experimental-computational…
We investigate in vitro fibrillation kinetics of the hormone peptide glucagon at various concentrations using confocal microscopy and determine the glucagon fibril persistence length $60 \mu\textrm{m}$. At all concentrations we observe that…
We present a technique for calculating free-energy profiles for the nucleation of multicomponent structures that contain as many species as building blocks. We find that a key factor is the topology of the graph describing the connectivity…
Nature offers a remarkable diversity of nanomaterials that have extraordinary functional and structural properties. Intrinsic to nature is the impressive ability to form complex ordered nanomaterials via self-organization. One particularly…
In living cells, proteins self-assemble into large functional structures based on specific interactions between molecularly complex patches. Due to this complexity, protein self-assembly results from a competition between a large number of…
The folding of a polypeptide is an example of the cooperative effects of the amino-acid residues. Of recent interest is how a secondary structure, such as a helix, spontaneously forms during the collapse of a peptide from an initial…
The field of complex self-assembly is moving toward the design of multi-particle structures consisting of thousands of distinct building blocks. To exploit the potential benefits of structures with such `addressable complexity,' we need to…
Macroscopic properties of suspensions, such as those composed of globular particles (e.g., colloidal or macromolecular), can be tuned by controlling the equilibrium aggregation of the particles. We examine how aggregation -- and, hence,…
We study the self-assembly of branching-chain networks and crystals in a binary colloidal system with tunable interactions. The particle positions are extracted from microscope images and order parameters are extracted by image processing…
The assembly of filamentous bundles with controlled diameters is common in biological systems and desirable for the development of nanomaterials. We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral…
Viewed under a fluorescence microscope, the actomyosin cytoskeleton presents vivid streaks of lines together with persistent oscillatory waves. Using an active hydrodynamic approach, we show how a uniform distribution of single or mixture…
Two isoforms of beta amyloid peptides, Ab40 and Ab42, differ from each other only in the last two amino acids, IA, at the end of Ab42. They, however, differ significantly in their ability in inducing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The rate…
Structure formation and constant reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton are key requirements for the function of living cells. Here we show that a minimal reconstituted system consisting of actin filaments, crosslinking molecules and…