Related papers: Mechanism for the stabilization of protein cluster…
In conflict with standard notions of thermodynamics, mesoscopically-sized inclusions (``clusters'') of a solute-rich liquid have been observed in equilibrated solutions of proteins and other molecules. According to a complexation scenario…
Inside a cell, heterotypic proteins assemble in inhomogeneous, crowded systems where the abundance of these proteins vary with cell types. While some protein complexes form putative structures that can be visualized with imaging, there are…
Quantum Bose-Bose mixtures with strong attraction can form self-bound, liquid-like droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations. Despite equilibrium densities much lower than those of classical liquids, these droplets exhibit finite surface…
When dense granular gases are continuously excited under microgravity conditions, spatial inhomogeneities of the particle number density can emerge. A significant share of particles may collect in strongly overpopulated regions, called…
Rigid particles pack into structures, such as sand dunes on the beach, whose overall stability is determined by the average number of contacts between particles. However, when packing spatially extended objects with flexible shapes,…
By means of Langevin dynamics simulations, we investigate the gel formation of randomly functionalized polymers in solution, with the ability to form both intra- and intermolecular reversible bonds. Under highly dilute conditions, these…
Soft-granular media, such as dense emulsions, foams or tissues, exhibit either fluid- or solid-like properties depending on the applied external stresses. Whereas bulk rheology of such materials has been thoroughly investigated, the…
The aggregation of protein-stabilised emulsions leads to the formation of emulsion gels. These soft solids are classically envisioned as droplet-filled matrices. Here however, it is assumed that protein-coated sub-micron droplets contribute…
Enhanced stabilisation of protein structures via the presence of inert excipients is a key mechanism adopted both by physiological systems and in biotechnological applications. While the intrinsic stability of proteins is ultimately fixed…
Proteins form a very important class of polymers. In spite of major advances in the understanding of polymer science, the protein problem has remained largely unsolved. Here, we show that a polymer chain viewed as a tube not only captures…
Model chains are studied via Monte Carlo simulations which are deposited with a fixed flux on a substrate. They may represent, e.g., stiff lipophilic chains with an head group and tail groups mimicking the alkyl chain. After some subsequent…
We demonstrate the accuracy of the hypernetted chain closure and of the mean-field approximation for the calculation of the fluid-state properties of systems interacting by means of bounded and positive-definite pair potentials with…
We investigate the behavior of a mixture of asymmetric colloidal dumbbells and emulsion droplets by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The evaporation of the droplets and the competition between droplet-colloid attraction and…
Catalyst particles or complexes suspended in liquid films can trigger chemical reactions leading to inhomogeneous concentrations of reactants and products in the film. We demonstrate that the sensitivity of the liquid film's gas-liquid…
Based upon kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization in a simple polymer model we present a new picture of the mechanism by which the thickness of lamellar polymer crystals is constrained to a value close to the minimum…
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 incessant swimming motion of microbes in dense suspensions can give rise to striking collective motions and coherent structures. However, theoretical investigations of these structures typically utilize either computationally demanding…
Theory is presented for the phase stability of mixtures containing nanospheres and non-adsorbing reversible supramolecular polymers. This was made possible by incorporating the depletion thickness and osmotic pressure of reversible…
Many functional units in biology, such as enzymes or molecular motors, are composed of several subunits that can reversibly assemble and disassemble. This includes oligomeric proteins composed of several smaller monomers, as well as protein…
Experiments and theories have shown that when steric interactions between crowding particles and proteins are dominant, which give rise to Asakura-Oosawa depletion forces, then the stabilities of the proteins increase compared to the…