Related papers: Resolving the effects of nanoscale membrane curvat…
The curvature of biological membranes at the nanometer scale is critically important for vesicle trafficking, organelle morphology, and disease propagation. This manuscript reports the development of Polarized Localization Microscopy (PLM),…
Many lipid membrane-mediated transport processes--such as mechanically-gated channel activation and solute transport--involve structural and dynamical features on membrane thickness length scales. Most existing membrane models, however,…
The plasma membrane of living cells is compartmentalized at multiple spatial scales ranging from the nano- to the meso-scale. This non-random organization is crucial for a large number of cellular functions. At the nanoscale, cell membranes…
Gaining access to the cell interior is fundamental for many applications, such as electrical recording, drug and biomolecular delivery. A very promising technique consists of culturing cells on nano/micro pillars. The tight adhesion and…
Lipid bilayer membranes undergo rapid bending undulations with wavelengths from tens of nanometers to tens of microns due to thermal fluctuations. Here, we probe such undulations and the membranes' mechanics by measuring the time-varying…
Optical nanoantennas can efficiently confine light into nanoscopic hotspots, enabling single-molecule detection sensitivity at biological relevant conditions. This innovative approach to breach the diffraction limit offers a versatile…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
The membrane curvature of cells and intracellular compartments continuously adapts to enable cells to perform vital functions, from cell division to signal trafficking. Understanding how membrane geometry affects these processes in vivo is…
Temporally and spatially resolved measurements of protein transport inside cells provide important clues to the functional architecture and dynamics of biological systems. Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) technique has been…
Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms…
For endocytosis and exocytosis, membranes transition between planar, budding, and vesicular topographies through nanoscale reorganization of lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates. However, prior attempts to understand the initial stages of…
Lipid bilayers often form high-curvature configurations due to self-assembly conditions or certain biological processes. However, particle-based simulations of lipid membranes are predominantly of flat lipid membranes because planar…
By circumventing the optical diffraction limit, super-resolved fluorescence microscopies enable the study of larger cellular structures and molecular assemblies. However, fluorescence nanoscopy currently lacks the spatiotemporal resolution…
Several methods now exist to solvate lipid bilayer discoids at the scale of tens of nanometres. Due to their size, such nanodiscoids have a comparatively large boundary-to-area ratio, making them unusually well-suited to probing the effects…
We propose a methodology to measure the mechanical properties of membranes from their fluctuations and apply this to optical microscopy measurements of giant unilamellar vesicles of lipids. We analyze the effect of the projection of thermal…
The study of interactions between biomimetic membranes and micron-sized particles is crucial for understanding various biological processes. Here, we control microparticle spontaneous engulfment by giant lipid vesicles by tuning particle…
Since the lipid raft model was developed at the end of the last century, it became clear that the specific molecular arrangements of phospholipid assemblies within a membrane have profound implications in a vast range of physiological…
FRET-based approaches are a unique tool for sensing the immediate surroundings and interactions of (bio)molecules. FRET imaging and FLIM (Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy) enable the visualization of the spatial distribution of…
We report on a new method to characterize nano-hydrodynamic properties at the liquid/solid interface relying solely on the measurement of the thermal motion of confined colloids. Using Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS) to probe…
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…