Related papers: Phase transitions in biological membranes
Enhanced dynamical fluctuations of RNAs, facilitated by a network of water molecules with strong interactions with RNA, are suspected to be critical in their ability to respond to a variety of cellular signals. Using atomically detailed…
New experiments for water at the surface of proteins at very low temperature display intriguing dynamic behaviors. The extreme conditions of these experiments make it difficult to explore the wide range of thermodynamic state points needed…
Diffusion in cell membranes is not just simple two-dimensional Brownian motion, but typically depends on the timescale of the observation. The physical origins of this anomalous sub-diffusion are unresolved, and model systems capable of…
An action potential is typically described as a purely electrical change that propagates along the membrane of excitable cells. However, recent experiments have demonstrated that non-linear acoustic pulses that propagate along lipid…
We review recent computer simulation studies of undulating lipid bilayers. Theoretical interpretations of such fluctuating membranes are most commonly based on generalized Helfrich-type elastic models, with additional contributions of local…
Biological membranes constitute boundaries of cells and cell organelles. Physico-chemical mechanisms at the atomic scale are dictated by protein-lipid interaction strength, lipid composition, lipid distribution in the vicinity of the…
Novel physical mechanism is proposed for explanation of temperature-independent transition reactions in molecular systems. The mechanism becomes effective in the case of conformation transitions between quasi-isoenergetic molecular states.…
Lipid membranes form the barrier between the inside and outside of cells and many of their subcompartments. As such, they bind to a wide variety of nano- and micrometer sized objects and, in the presence of strong adhesive forces, strongly…
Lipid bilayer membranes below their main transition have two tilt order parameters, corresponding to the two monolayers. These two tilts may be strongly coupled to membrane shape but only weakly coupled to each other. We discuss some…
Molecular dynamics simulations are carried out to explore the dynamical crossover phenomenon in strongly confined and mildly supercooled water in graphene oxide nanopores. In contrast to studies where confinement is used to study the…
Tension in lipid membranes is often controlled externally, by pulling on the boundary of the membrane or changing osmotic pressure across a curved membrane. But modifications of the tension can also be induced in an internal fashion, for…
We propose an alternative mechanism for the gating of biological membrane channels in response to membrane tension that involves a change in the slope of the membrane near the channel. Under biological membrane tensions we show that the…
We study theoretically the spatiotemporal response of a lipid membrane submitted to a local chemical change of its environment, taking into account the time-dependent profile of the reagent concentration due to diffusion in the solution…
Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…
Understanding how lipid bilayers respond to pressure is essential for interpreting the coupling between membrane proteins and their native environments. Here, we use all-atom molecular dynamics to examine the pressure-temperature behavior…
During the melting transition of dimyristoyl phosphatidylglycerol (DMPG), the order of the lipid chains and the three-dimensional, vesicular structural arrangement change simultaneously. These changes result in peculiar heat capacity…
The physical approach of a small particle (virus, medical drug) to the cell membrane represents the crucial first step before active internalization and is governed by thermal diffusion. Using a fully analytical theory we show that the…
Lipid bilayers forming biological membranes are known to behave as viscous 2D fluids on submicrometer scales; usually they contain a large number of active protein inclusions. Recently, it has been shown [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112,…
We report a numerical simulation of the phase diagram of a simple model for membrane proteins constrained to move in a plane. In analogy with the corresponding three dimensional models, the liquid-gas transition becomes metastable as the…
We predict a novel temperature-driven phase transition of DNA below the melting transition. The additional, intermediate phase exists for repetitive sequences, when the two strands have different lengths. In this phase, the excess bases of…