Related papers: Rigidity of transmembrane proteins determines thei…
Cell adhesion proteins are transmembrane proteins that bind cells to their environment. These proteins typically cluster into disk-shaped or linear structures. Here we show that such clustering patterns spontaneously emerge when the protein…
We carry out a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation of phospholipid vesicles with transmembrane proteins. We measure the mean and Gaussian curvatures of our protein-embedded vesicles and quantitatively show how protein clusters…
A physical scenario accounting for the existence of size-limited submicrometric domains in cell membranes is proposed. It is based on the numerical investigation of the counterpart, in lipidic membranes where proteins are diffusing, of the…
Experiments have revealed that membrane proteins can form two-dimensional clusters with regular translational and orientational protein arrangements, which may allow cells to modulate protein function. However, the physical mechanisms…
The spatio-temporal organization of proteins and the associated morphological changes in membranes are of importance in cell signaling. Several mechanisms that promote the aggregation of proteins at low cell surface concentrations have been…
Membrane bending is an extensively studied problem from both modeling and experimental perspectives because of the wide implications of curvature generation in cell biology. Many of the curvature generating aspects in membranes can be…
Protein aggregates exhibit diverse morphology, exemplified by amyloid fibrils, gel-like structures, and liquid-like condensates. Differences in the morphologies in identical proteins play important functional roles in several diseases.…
It has recently been proposed that proteins embedded in lipidic bio-membranes can spontaneously self-organize into stable small clusters, or membrane nano-domains, due to the competition between short-range attractive and longer-range…
Protein aggregation on the plasma membrane (PM) is of critical importance to many cellular processes such as cell adhesion, endocytosis, fibrillar conformation, and vesicle transport. Lateral diffusion of protein aggregates or clusters on…
Folding and aggregation of proteins, the interaction between proteins and membranes, as well as the adsorption of organic soft matter to inorganic solid substrates belong to the most interesting challenges in understanding structure and…
Biological membranes are elastic media in which the presence of a transmembrane protein leads to local bilayer deformation. The energetics of deformation allow two membrane proteins in close proximity to influence each other's equilibrium…
The intricate three-dimensional geometries of protein tertiary structures underlie protein function and emerge through a folding process from one-dimensional chains of amino acids. The exact spatial sequence and configuration of amino…
Protein folds are built primarily from the packing together of two types of structures: alpha-helices and beta-sheets. Neither structure is rigid, and the flexibility of helices and sheets is often important in determining the final fold…
Nearly a quarter of genomic sequences and almost half of all receptors that are likely to be targets for drug design are integral membrane proteins. Understanding the detailed mechanisms of the folding of membrane proteins is a largely…
Atomic packing is an important metric for characterizing protein structures, as it significantly influences various features including the stability, the rate of evolution and the functional roles of proteins. Packing in protein structures…
The assembly of proteins in membranes plays a key role in many crucial cellular pathways. Despite their importance, characterizing transmembrane assembly remains challenging for experiments and simulations. Equilibrium molecular dynamics…
We use coarse grained molecular dynamics simulations to investigate diffusion properties of sheared lipid membranes with embedded transmembrane proteins. In membranes without proteins, we find normal in-plane diffusion of lipids in all flow…
The spectrum and scale of fluctuations in protein structures affect the range of cell phenomena, including stability of protein structures or their fragments, allosteric transitions and energy transfer. The study presents a…
The adhesion of biomembranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. The proteins can only bind if the separation between apposing membranes is sufficiently close to the length of the protein complexes,…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…