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Chemical surfactants are omnipresent in consumers' products but they suffer from environmental concerns. For this reason, complete replacement of petrochemical surfactants by biosurfactants constitute a holy grail but this is far from…
We have used scanning probe microscopy to investigate self-assembled monolayers of chemically synthesized peptides. We find that the peptides form a dense uniform monolayer, above which is found a sparse additional layer. Using scanning…
The equilibrium properties of block copolymer micelles confined in polymer thin films are investigated using self-consistent field theory. The theory is based on a model system consisting of AB diblock copolymers and A homopolymers. Two…
We introduce a simple "patchy particle" model to study the thermodynamics and dynamics of self-assembly of homomeric protein complexes. Our calculations allow us to rationalize recent results for dihedral complexes. Namely, why evolution of…
In this paper, phase field models are developed for multi-component vesicle membranes with different lipid compositions and membranes with free boundary. These models are used to simulate the deformation of membranes under the elastic…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
The shape of biological shells, such as cell nuclei, membranes, and vesicles, often deviates from a perfect sphere due to an interplay of complex interactions with a myriad of molecular structures. In particular, semiflexible biopolymers…
We present a hybrid simulation method which allows one to study the dynamical evolution of self-assembling (co)polymer solutions in the presence of hydrodynamic interactions. The method combines an established dynamic density functional…
Biological membranes constitute boundaries of cells and cell organelles. Physico-chemical mechanisms at the atomic scale are dictated by protein-lipid interaction strength, lipid composition, lipid distribution in the vicinity of the…
The rise of nanotechnology has been propelled by low dimensional metals. Albeit the long perceived importance, synthesis of freestanding metallic nanomembranes, or the so-called 2D metals, however has been restricted to simple metals with a…
Biomolecular structures are assemblies of emergent anisotropic building modules such as uniaxial helices or biaxial strands. We provide an approach to understanding a marginally compact phase of matter that is occupied by proteins and DNA.…
The reproduction of a living cell requires a repeatable set of chemical events to be properly coordinated. Such events define a replication cycle, coupling the growth and shape change of the cell membrane with internal metabolic reactions.…
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…
Understanding dynamic and complex interaction of biological membranes with extracellular matrices plays a crucial role in controlling a variety of cell behavior and functions, from cell adhesion and growth to signaling and differentiation.…
An autocatalytic pattern matching polymer system is studied as an abstract model for chemical ecosystem evolution. Highly ordered populations with particular sequence patterns appear spontaneously out of a vast number of possible states.…
Lipid vesicles consist of aqueous cores surrounded by a bilayer of phospholipids. Hybrid polymer-lipid vesicles incorporate both polymers and lipids, offering promising properties for developing pharmaceuticals, biosensors, and artificial…
We study ground states of a hybrid system consisting of a polymer and an attractive nanowire by means of computer simulations. Depending on structural and energetic properties of the substrate, we find different adsorbed polymer…
Nanoparticles introduced in living cells are capable of strongly promoting the aggregation of peptides and proteins. We use here molecular dynamics simulations to characterise in detail the process by which nanoparticle surfaces catalyse…
The formation of a viral capsid -- the highly-ordered protein shell that surrounds the genome of a virus -- is the canonical example of self-assembly. The capsids of many positive-sense RNA viruses spontaneously assemble from in vitro…
A binary mixture of particles interacting with spherically-symmetric potentials leading to microsegregation is studied by theory and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We consider spherical particles with equal diameters and volume…