Related papers: Pre-transition effects mediate forces of assembly …
The effects of a displacive structural phase transition on sliding friction are in principle accessible to nanoscale tools such as the Atomic Force Microscopy, yet they are still surprisingly unexplored. We present model simulations…
We have used computer simulation to study the collapse of a hydrophobic chain in water. We find that the mechanism of collapse is much like that of a first order phase transition. The evaporation of water in the vicinity of the polymer…
The effect of strong confinement on the positional and orientational ordering is examined in a system of hard rectangular rods with length L and diameter D (L>D) using the Parsons-Lee modification of the second virial density functional…
Recent experiments by Y. Gambin et al. [PNAS 103, 2098 (2006)] have called into question the applicability of the Saffman-Delbruck diffusivity for proteins embedded in the lipid bilayers. We present a simple argument to account for this…
We have constructed a model for the kinetics of rupture of membranes under tension, applying physical principles relevant to lipid bilayers held together by hydrophobic interactions. The membrane is characterized by the bulk compressibility…
We examine metastable and transient effects both above and below the first-order disorder driven decoupling line in a 3D simulation of magnetically interacting pancake vortices. We observe pronounced transient and history effects as well as…
We consider general disordered models of pinning of directed polymers on a defect line. This class contains in particular the $(1+1)$--dimensional interface wetting model, the disordered Poland--Scheraga model of DNA denaturation and other…
We present a computational study on the folding and aggregation of proteins in aqueous environment, as function of its concentration. We show how the increase of the concentration of individual protein species can induce a partial unfolding…
Spherical confinement can act either stabilizing or destabilizing on the collapsed state of a semi-flexible polymer. General free-energy arguments suggest that the order of the unconstrained collapse transition is the distinguishing factor:…
For many viruses assembly and budding occur simultaneously during virion formation. Understanding the mechanisms underlying this process could promote biomedical efforts to block viral propagation and enable use of capsids in nanomaterials…
Hydrophobic force, interfacial tension, transverse density profile in confined water system are addressed from first principles of statistical mechanics in a lattice model for water. Using molecular mean field theory technique we deduce…
This paper reports the force spectroscopy analysis of a polymer that translocates from one side of a membrane to the other side through an extended pore, pulled by a cantilever that moves with constant velocity against the damping and the…
Unlike their model membrane counterparts, biological membranes are richly decorated with a heterogeneous assembly of membrane proteins. These proteins are so tightly packed that their excluded area interactions can alter the free energy…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
It was recently discovered that friction between surfaces bearing phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipid bilayers can be increased by two orders of magnitude or more via an externally-applied electric field, and that this increase is fully…
Water-phospholipid interactions at the lipid bilayer/water interfaces are of essential importance for the dynamics, stability and function of biological membrane, and are also strongly associated with numerous biological processes at the…
A minimalist simulation model for lipid bilayers is presented. Each lipid is represented by a flexible chain of beads in implicit solvent. The hydrophobic effect is mimicked through an intermolecular pair potential localized at the…
The coupling between the depolymerization of microtubules (MTs) and the motion of the Dam1 ring complex is now thought to play an important role in the generation of forces during mitosis. Our current understanding of this motion is based…
We consider the patterns of collective motion emerging when many aligning, self-propelling units move in two dimensions while interacting through a repulsive potential and are also subject to delays and random perturbations. In this…
Polymer chains decorated with a fraction of monomers capable of forming reversible bonds form transient polymer networks that are important in soft and biological systems. If chains are flexible and the attractive monomers are all of the…