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Living systems rely on coordinated molecular interactions, especially those related to gene expression and protein activity. The Unfolded Protein Response is a crucial mechanism in eukaryotic cells, activated when unfolded proteins exceed a…
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 report simulation studies of 33 single intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) using coarse-grained (CG) bead-spring models where interactions among different amino acids are introduced through a hydropathy matrix and additional…
We construct colloidal ``sticky'' rods from the semi-flexible filamentous fd virus and temperature-sensitive polymers poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM). The phase diagram of fd-PNIPAM system becomes independent of ionic strength at high…
Biological systems achieve adaptive mechanical responses through reaction-diffusion processes that couple chemical wave propagation to structural transitions. Although synthetic hydrogels with enzymatic reactions offer a platform for…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the behavior of a dilute solution of strongly charged polyelectrolytes in poor solvents, where we take counterions explicitly into account. We focus on the chain conformational properties under…
The role of the rigidity of a peptide chain in its equilibrium dynamics is investigated within a realistic model with stringent microscopically derived coupling interaction potential and effective on-site potential. The coupling interaction…
We introduce a sequence-dependent parametrization for a coarse-grained DNA model [T. E. Ouldridge, A. A. Louis, and J. P. K. Doye, J. Chem. Phys. 134, 085101 (2011)] originally designed to reproduce the properties of DNA molecules with…
We present an analytical theory for heteropolymer deformation, as exemplified experimentally by stretching of single protein molecules. Using a mean-field replica theory, we determine phase diagrams for stress-induced unfolding of typical…
We present a simulation method that allows us to calculate the titration curves for systems undergoing protonation/deprotonation reactions -- such as charged colloidal suspensions with acidic/basic surface groups, polyelectrolytes,…
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are important for biological functions. In contrast to folded proteins, molecular recognition among certain IDPs is "fuzzy" in that their binding and/or phase separation are stochastically governed…
Protein-protein interactions (protein functionalities) are mediated by water, which compacts individual proteins and promotes close and temporarily stable large-area protein-protein interfaces. In their classic paper Kyte and Doolittle (KD)…
We study the behavior of a flexible polymer chain in the presence of a low-molecular weight solvent in the vicinity of a liquid-gas critical point within the framework of a self-consistent field theory. The total free energy of the dilute…
A reduced protein model with five to six atoms per amino acid and five amino acid types is developed and tested on a three-helix-bundle protein, a 46-amino acid fragment from staphylococcal protein A. The model does not rely on the widely…
We construct a coarse-grained (CG) model for dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)/cholesterol bilayers and apply it to large-scale simulation studies of lipid membranes. Our CG model is a two-dimensional representation of the membrane,…
We propose a model describing liquid-solid phase coexistence in mixed lipid membranes by including explicitly the occurrence of a rippled phase. For a single component membrane, we employ a previous model in which the membrane thickness is…
After discussing the relevance of statistical physics in molecular recognition processes, we present a schematic model for ligand-receptor association based on an Ising chain. We discuss the possible behaviors of the affinity when the…
We introduce a microscopic model of a lipid with a charged headgroup and flexible hydrophobic tails, a neutral solvent, and counter ions. Short-ranged interactions between hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties are included as are the Coulomb…
Polymer chains immersed in different solvent molecules exhibit diverse properties due to multiple spatiotemporal scales and complex interactions. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the conformational and static properties of…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the conformations of a single polymer chain, represented by the Kremer-Grest bead-spring model, in a solution with a Lennard-Jones liquid as the solvent when the interaction strength…