Related papers: Nano-domain formation in charged membranes: Beyond…
Rafts, or functional domains, are transient nano- or mesoscopic structures in the plasma membrane and are thought to be essential for many cellular processes such as signal transduction, adhesion, trafficking and lipid/protein sorting.…
We study the phases of correlated charge-density waves that form at a high magnetic field in two parallel graphene flakes separated by a thin insulator. The predicted phases include the square and hexagonal charge-density-wave bubbles, and…
The dynamical response of a lipid membrane to a local perturbation of its molecular symmetry is investigated theoretically. A density asymmetry between the two membrane leaflets is predominantly released by in-plane lipid diffusion or…
We develop a model for a driven cell- or artificial membrane in an electrolyte. The system is kept far from equilibrium by the application of a DC electric field or by concentration gradients, which causes ions to flow through specific…
We study the electro-hydrodynamics of the Debye screening layer that arises in an aqueous binary solution near a planar insulating wall when applying a spatially modulated AC-voltage. Combining this with first order perturbation theory we…
A new model for the interaction of an electric pulse with a lipid membrane is proposed. Using this model we show that when a DC electric pulse is applied to an insulating lipid membrane separating fluids with different conductivities, the…
Using both theoretical modeling and computer simulations we study a model system for DNA interactions in the vicinity of charged membranes. We focus on the polarization of the mobile charges in the membranes due to the nearby charged rods…
Self-assembled membranes of amphiphilic diblock copolymers enable comparisons of cohesiveness with lipid membranes over the range of hydrophobic thicknesses d=3-15 nm. At zero mechanical tension the breakdown potential V_c for polymersomes…
Biomembranes, which are mainly composed of neutral and charged lipids, exhibit a large variety of functional structures and dynamics. Here, we report a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the phase separation and…
The dielectric constant or relative permittivity of a dielectric material, which describes how the net electric field in the medium is reduced with respect to the external field, is a parameter of critical importance for charging and…
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…
Lipid bilayer membranes are not uniform and clusters of lipids in a more ordered state exist within the generally disorder lipid milieu of the membrane. These clusters of ordered lipids microdomains are now referred to as lipid rafts.…
In the study of colloidal, biological and electrochemical systems, it is customary to treat surfaces, macromolecules and electrodes as homogeneously charged. This simplified approach is proven successful in most cases, but fails to describe…
We characterize the dynamics of an electrolyte embedded in a varying-section channel under the action of a constant external electrostatic field. By means of molecular dynamics simulations we determine the stationary density, charge and…
We study the nucleation of nearly-hard charged colloidal particles. We use Monte Carlo simulations in combination with free-energy calculations to accurately predict the phase diagrams of these particles and map them via the freezing…
Continuum elastic models that account for membrane thickness variations are especially useful in the description of nanoscale deformations due to the presence of membrane proteins with hydrophobic mismatch. We show that terms involving the…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…
In the realm of nanoscience, the dynamic behaviors of liquids at scales beyond the conventional structural relaxation time, $\tau$, unfold a fascinating blend of solid-like characteristics, including the propagation of collective shear…
We investigate numerically at various fillings the ground state of the one-dimensional Hubbard model with correlated hopping x (Hirsch model). It is found that, for a wide range of filling values n around half filling, and for repulsive…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…