Related papers: Shape selection of surface-bound helical filaments…
Cohesive interactions between filamentous molecules have broad implications for a range of biological and synthetic materials. While long-standing theoretical approaches have addressed the problem of inter-filament forces from the limit of…
Chiral polymers are ubiquitous in nature and in the cellular context they are often found in association with membranes. Here we show that surface bound polymers with an intrinsic twist and anisotropic bending stiffness can exhibit a sharp…
Curvature plays a central organizational role in active polymer dynamics. Using large-scale Langevin-dynamics simulations, we study active semiflexible filaments confined to smooth curved surfaces and map how curvature, bending rigidity,…
Dynamic organization of the cytoskeletal filaments and rod-like proteins in the cell membrane and other biological interfaces occurs in many cellular processes. Previous modeling studies have considered the dynamics of a single rod on fluid…
We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…
In a previous paper, we examined a class of possible conformations for helically patterned filaments in contact with a bonding surface. In particular, we investigated geometries where contact between the pattern and the surface was improved…
Modeling membrane interactions with arbitrarily shaped colloidal particles, such as environmental micro- and nanoplastics, at the cell scale remains particularly challenging, owing to the complexity of particle geometries and the need to…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Cellular biology abound with filaments interacting through fluids, from intracellular microtubules, to rotating flagella and beating cilia. While previous work has demonstrated the complexity of capturing nonlocal hydrodynamic interactions…
Densely-packed bundles of biological filaments (filamentous proteins) are common and critical structural elements in range of biological materials. While most bundles form from intrinsically straight filaments, there are notable examples of…
Motivated by recent experimental work on multicomponent lipid membranes supported by colloidal scaffolds, we report an exhaustive theoretical investigation of the equilibrium configurations of binary mixtures on curved substrates. Starting…
The ability of thin materials to shape-shift is a common occurrence that leads to dynamic pattern formation and function in natural and man-made structures. However, harnessing this concept to design inorganic structures at the nanoscale…
We use numerical simulations to show how a fully flexible filament binding to a deformable cylindrical surface may acquire a macroscopic persistence length and a helical conformation. This is a result of the nontrivial elastic response to…
We theoretically study the conformations of a helical semi-flexible filament confined to a flat surface. This squeezed helix exhibits a variety of unexpected shapes resembling circles, waves or spirals depending on the material parameters.…
In active matter systems, deformable boundaries provide a mechanism to organize internal active stresses and perform work on the external environment. To study a minimal model of such a system, we perform particle-based simulations of an…
In this work, we present a computational formulation based on continuum mechanics to study the interaction of fluid membranes embedded with semiflexible filaments. This is motivated by systems in membrane biology, such as cytoskeletal…
Coordinated cellular movements are key processes in tissue morphogenesis. Using a cell-based modeling approach we study the dynamics of epithelial layers lining surfaces with constant and varying curvature. We demonstrate that extrinsic…
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…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
The interplay of membrane proteins is vital for many biological processes, such as cellular transport, cell division, and signal transduction between nerve cells. Theoretical considerations have led to the idea that the membrane itself…