Related papers: Electrostatic Binding and Hydrophobic Collapse of …
We study the structure of complexes formed between ionic surfactants (SF) and a single oppositely charged polyelectrolyte (PE) chain. For our computer simulation we use the ``primitive'' electrolyte model: while the polyelectrolyte is…
Electrostatics plays a key role in biomolecular assembly. Oppositely charged biomolecules, for instance, can co-assembled into functional units, such as DNA and histone proteins into nucleosomes and actin-binding protein complexes into…
Phase separation in biomolecular mixtures can result from multiple physical interactions, which may act either complementarily or antagonistically. In the case of protein-nucleic acid mixtures, charge plays a key role but can have…
A combination of Fourier transform infrared and phase transition measurements as well as molecular computer simulations, and thermodynamic modeling were performed to probe the mechanisms by which guanidinium salts influence the stability of…
The amyloid $\beta$ peptide (A$\beta$42), whose aggregation is associated with Alzheimer's disease, is an amphiphatic peptide with a high propensity to self-assemble. A$\beta$42 has a net negative charge at physiological pH and modulations…
The adsorption of DNA or other polyelectrolyte molecules on charged membranes is a recurrent motif in soft matter and bionanotechnological systems. Two typical situations encountered are the deposition of single DNA chains onto substrates…
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)…
The electrostatic interaction between two non-identical, moderately charged colloids situated in close proximity of each other at a fluid interface is studied. By resorting to a well-justified model system, this problem is analytically…
The behavior of proteins near interfaces is relevant for biological and medical purposes. Previous results in bulk show that, when the protein concentration increases, the proteins unfold and, at higher concentrations, aggregate. Here, we…
Protein folding is one of the age-old biological problems that refers to the mechanism of understanding and predicting how a protein's linear sequence of amino acids folds into its specific three dimensional structure.This structure is…
We scrutinize the effect of polyvalent ions on polymer-DNA interactions. We extend a recently developed test charge theory to the case of a stiff polymer interacting with a DNA molecule in an electrolyte mixture. The theory accounts for…
Similarly-charged polymers in solution, known as polyelectrolytes, are known to form aggregated structures in the presence of oppositely charged counterions. Understanding the dependence of the equilibrium phases and the dynamics of the…
The functionalities and applications of complex coacervates -- liquid condensates resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation of charged polymers -- are significantly influenced by the dispersion and aggregation states of guest…
It is challenging to parameterize the force field for calcium ions (Ca2+) in calcium-binding proteins because of their unique coordination chemistry that involves the surrounding atoms required for stability. In this work, we observed wide…
Polymer chains adsorbed onto oppositely charged spherical colloidal particles can significantly modify the particle-particle interactions. For sufficient amounts of added polymers, the original electrostatic repulsion can even turn into an…
One of the challenges of self-assembling finite-sized colloidal aggregates with a sought morphology is the necessity of precisely sorting the position of the colloids at the microscopic scale to avoid the formation of off-target structures.…
Understanding the molecular mechanisms driving the binding between bio-molecules is a crucial challenge in molecular biology. In this respect, characteristics like the preferentially hydrophobic composition of the binding interfaces, the…
Aggregation and other interactions are suppressed for a biological semiflexible polyelectrolyte, hyaluronan (HA), when it is embedded in a mixture with another negatively charged and flexible polyelectrolyte chain, sodium polystyrene…
While nucleic-acids can be readily amplified for single-marker detection, a comparable method for proteins assay is currently unavailable. Proteins potentiometric detections at 10-20 molar have been demonstrated, but the mechanism remains…
The electrostatic contribution to twist rigidity of DNA is studied, and it is shown that the Coulomb self-energy of the double-helical sugar-phosphate backbone contributes considerably to twist rigidity of DNA--the electrostatic twist…