Related papers: Controlling the shape of membrane protein polyhedr…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
By evaporating a drop of lipid dispersion we generate the myelin morphology often seen in dissolving surfactant powders. We explain these puzzling nonequilibrium structures using a geometric argument: The bilayer repeat spacing increases…
Spatial organisation is a hallmark of all living cells, and recreating it in model systems is a necessary step in the creation of synthetic cells. It is therefore of both fundamental and practical interest to better understand the basic…
Under dehydration conditions, amphipathic Late Embryogenesis Abundant (LEA) proteins fold spontaneously from a random conformation into alpha-helical structures and this transition is promoted by the presence of membranes. To gain insight…
Polyhedral vesicles with a large bending modulus of the membrane such as the gel phase lipid membrane were studied using a Brownian dynamics simulation. The vesicles exhibit various polyhedral morphologies such as tetrahedron and cube…
A reduced model, which can fold both helix and sheet structures, is proposed to study the problem of protein folding. The goal of this model is to find an unbiased effective potential that has included the effects of water and at the same…
Artificial bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs), along with patch-clamped membranes, are frequently used for functional analyses of membrane proteins. In both methods, the electric properties of membranes are characterized by only one parameter,…
We outline a concept of self-assembled soft matter devices based on micro-fluidics, which use surfactant bilayer membranes as their main building blocks, arrested in geometric structures provided by top-down lithography. Membranes form…
Micropatterning techniques have become an important tool for the study of cell behavior in controlled microenvironments. As a consequence, several approaches for the creation of micropatterns have been developed in recent years. However,…
Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are a leading platform in the delivery of RNA-based therapeutics, playing a pivotal role in the clinical success of mRNA vaccines and other nucleic acid drugs. Their performance in RNA encapsulation and delivery…
Certain membrane proteins, peptides, nanoparticles and nanotubes have rigid structure and fixed shape. They are often viewed as spheres and cylinders with certain surface properties. Single Chain Mean Field theory is used to model the…
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…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
We study the effect of membrane proteins on the shape, composition and thermodynamic stability of the surrounding membrane. When the coupling between membrane composition and curvature is strong enough the nearby composition and shape both…
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…
We present Monte Carlo simulations of an ultra coarse-grained lipid bilayer with different number of lipids on both leaflets. In the simulations, we employ a new method for measuring the elastic parameters of the membrane, including the…
In this paper, we examine the mechanical role of the lipid bilayer in ion channel conformation and function with specific reference to the case of the mechanosensitive channel of large conductance (MscL). In a recent paper (Wiggins and…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
Cholesterol plays an essential role in biological membranes and is crucial for maintaining their stability and functionality. It is necessary for a variety of membranes, including planar bilayers, liposomes, curved bilayers, nanodiscs, and…