Related papers: The atomic-level mechanism underlying the function…
Aquaporins (AQPs) are recognized as transmembrane water channels that facilitate selective water permeation through their monomeric pores. Among the AQP family, AQP6 has a unique characteristic as an anion channel, which is allosterically…
Aquaporins (AQPs) are a family of transmembrane channels that are found from archaea, eubacteria, and fungi kingdoms to plants and animals. These proteins play a major role in water and small solutes transport across biological cell…
Water diffusion through membrane proteins is a key aspect of cellular function. Essential processes of cellular metabolism are driven by osmotic pressure, which depends on water channels. Membrane proteins such as aquaporins (AQPs) are…
The ubiquitous aquaporin channels are able to conduct water across cell membranes, combining the seemingly antagonist functions of a very high selectivity with a remarkable permeability. Whereas molecular details are obvious keys to perform…
Aquaporins (AQPs) and aquaglyceroporins (AQGPs) play a crucial role in regulating water transport and solute selectivity across biological membranes. Besides their biological relevance, AQPs have at-tracted growing interest as models for…
Protein-protein interactions (protein functionalities) are mediated by water, which compacts individual proteins and promotes close and temporarily stable large-area protein-protein interfaces. Proteins are peptide chains decorated by amino…
A hydrophobic constriction site can act as an efficient barrier to ion and water permeation if its diameter is less than the diameter of an ion's first hydration shell. This hydrophobic gating mechanism is thought to operate in a number of…
Water and water-mediated interactions determine thermodynamic and kinetics of protein folding, protein aggregation and self-assembly in confined spaces. To obtain insights into the role of water in the context of folding problems, we…
Unstructured proteins can modulate cellular responses to environmental conditions by undergoing coil-globule transitions and phase separation. However, the molecular mechanisms of these phenomena still need to be fully understood. Here, we…
The structures of proteins exhibit secondary elements composed of helices and loops. Comparison of several water-only hydrophobicity scales with the functionalities of two repeat proteins shows that these secondary elements possess…
The water dynamics, as characterized by the local hydrophobicity (LH), is investigated for tetrameric hemoglobin and dimeric melittin. For the T0 to R0 transition in Hb it is found that LH provides additional molecular-level insight into…
Water plays a key role in biological membrane transport. In ion channels and water-conducting pores (aquaporins), one dimensional confinement in conjunction with strong surface effects changes the physical behavior of water. In molecular…
The genome contains genetic information essential for cell's life. The genome's spatial organization inside the cell nucleus is critical for its proper function including gene regulation. The two major genomic compartments -- euchromatin…
We study the behavior of five proteins at the air-water and oil-water interfaces by all-atom molecular dynamics. The proteins are found to get distorted when pinned to the interface. This behavior is consistent with the phenomenological way…
Motor proteins are active enzyme molecules that play a crucial role in many biological processes. They transform the chemical energy into the mechanical work and move unidirectionally along rigid cytoskeleton filaments. Single-molecule…
Active networks composed of biopolymers and motor proteins provide versatile biomimetic systems that have advanced active matter physics and deepened our understanding of cytoskeletal dynamics and self-organization under diverse stimuli. In…
Molecular dynamics simulations have revealed a dramatic increase, with increasing temperature, of the amplitude of electrostatic fluctuations caused by water at the active site of metalloprotein plastocyanin. The increased breadth of…
Conventional kinesin is a two-headed homodimeric motor protein, which is able to walk along microtubules processively by hydrolyzing ATP. Its neck linkers, which connect the two motor domains and can undergo a docking/undocking transition,…
Viroporins are small viral proteins that oligomerize in the membrane of host cells and induce the formation of hydrophilic pores in these membranes, thus altering the physiological properties of the host cells. Due to their significance for…
Understanding intrusion and extrusion in nanoporous materials is a challenging multiscale problem of utmost importance for applications ranging from energy storage and dissipation to water desalination and hydrophobic gating in ion…