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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…
Active matter with local polar or nematic order is subject to the well-known Simha-Ramaswamy instability. It is so far unclear how, despite this instability, biological tissues can undergo robust active anisotropic deformation during animal…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
Cells actively probe and respond to the stiffness of their surroundings. Since mechanosensory cells in connective tissue are surrounded by a disordered network of biopolymers, their in vivo mechanical environment can be extremely…
Tissues commonly consist of cells embedded within a fibrous biopolymer network. Whereas cell-free reconstituted biopolymer networks typically soften under applied uniaxial compression, various tissues, including liver, brain, and fat, have…
Protein phase transitions govern numerous diseases, including neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. In Parkinson's disease, distinct species of the protein alpha-synuclein undergo phase transitions from highly…
Large-scale force generation is essential for biological functions such as cell motility, embryonic development, and muscle contraction. In these processes, forces generated at the molecular level by motor proteins are transmitted by…
First shells of hydration and bulk solvent plays a crucial role in the folding of proteins. Here, the role of water in the dynamics of proteins has been investigated using a theoretical protein-solvent model and a statistical physics…
The behavior of microgels near surfaces and their adsorption is studied by simple scaling theory. Two different types of microgels can be studied, i.e., fractal type microgels and randomly crosslinked polymer chains. In the first case the…
Single-molecule pulling experiments on unstructured proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases have measured rupture forces comparable to those for stable folded proteins. To investigate the structural mechanisms of this unexpected force…
Geometric and structural constraints greatly restrict the selection of folds adapted by protein backbones, and yet, folded proteins show an astounding diversity in functionality. For structure to have any bearing on function, it is thus…
How proteins fold remains a central unsolved problem in biology. While the idea of a folding code embedded in the amino acid sequence was introduced more than 6 decades ago, this code remains undefined. While we now have powerful predictive…
The protein folding problem has attracted an increasing attention from physicists. The problem has a flavor of statistical mechanics, but possesses the most common feature of most biological problems -- the profound effects of evolution. I…
Proteins can sometimes be knotted, and for many reasons the study of knotted proteins is rapidly becoming very important. For example, it has been proposed that a knot increases the stability of a protein. Knots may also alter enzymatic…
Knots in proteins have been proposed to resist proteasomal degradation. Ample evidence associates proteasomal degradation with neurodegeneration. One interesting possibility is that indeed knotted conformers stall this machinery leading to…
Protein-DNA complexes with loops play a fundamental role in a wide variety of cellular processes, ranging from the regulation of DNA transcription to telomere maintenance. As ubiquitous as they are, their precise in vivo properties and…
Disordered proteins play essential roles in myriad cellular processes, yet their structural characterization remains a major challenge due to their dynamic and heterogeneous nature. We here present a community-driven initiative to address…
The prediction of the three-dimensional native structure of proteins from the knowledge of their amino acid sequence, known as the protein folding problem, is one of the most important yet unsolved issues of modern science. Since the…
The transport of deformable particles through porous media underlies a wealth of applications ranging from filtration to oil recovery to the transport and spreading of biological agents. Using direct numerical simulations, we analyze the…
The formation and proliferation of protein aggregates play a central role in a number of devastating neuro-degenerative diseases. Many experimental studies indicate that the ability of existing aggregates to replicate is a key property in…