Related papers: Phase transitions in biological membranes
Thermo-osmotic and related thermo-phoretic phenomena can be found in many situations from biology to colloid science, but the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unexplored. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we measured the…
We point out that the smectic-nematic phase transition may considered as a transition of a stack of membranes in $2+\epsilon$ dimensions, in which the layers become so wrinkled that they interpenetrate each other are no longer…
The temperature distribution within cells, especially the debates on mitochondrial temperature, has recently attracted widespread attention. Some studies have claimed that the temperature of mitochondria can reach up to 50-53 degrees…
From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function.…
The movement of ionic solutions is an essential part of biology and technology. Fluidics, from nano- to micro- to microfluidics, is a burgeoning area of technology which is all about the movement of ionic solutions, on various scales. Many…
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…
A detailed understanding of the interface between living cells and substrate materials is of rising importance in many fields of medicine, biology and biotechnology. Cells at interfaces often form epithelia. The physical barrier that they…
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…
A phenomenological model for the unbinding transition of multi-component fluid membranes is proposed, where the unbinding transition is described using a theory analogous to Flory-Huggins theory for polymers. The coupling between the…
We use a simple and efficient computer model to investigate the physical properties of bilayer membranes. The amphiphilic molecules are modeled as short rigid trimers with finite range pair interactions between them. The pair potentials…
The extent to which biological interfaces affect the dynamics of water plays a key role in the exchange of matter and chemical interactions that are essential for life. The density and the mobility of water molecules depend on their…
We study the effects of thermal fluctuations on symmetric tensionless heterogeneous (two-component) fluid membranes in a simple minimal model. Close to the critical point $T_c$ of the associated miscibility phase transition of the…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations. Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a viscous…
Cell migration is important in many biological processes, including embryonic development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. In these tissues, a cell's motion is often strongly constrained by its neighbors, leading to glassy dynamics.…
The textbook picture of nerve activity is that of a propagating voltage pulse driven by electrical currents through ion channel proteins, which are gated by changes in voltage, temperature, pressure or by drugs. All function is directly…
Dielectric measurements at very low temperature indicate that in a glass with the eutectic composition BaO-Al$_2$O$_3$-SiO$_2$ a phase transition occurs at 5.84 mK. Below that temperature small magnetic fields of the order of 10 $\mu$T…
A stack of tensionless membranes with nonlinear curvature energy and vertical harmonic interaction is studied. At low temperatures, the system forms a lamellar phase. At a critical temperature, the stack disorders vertically in a…
Contrary to existing theoretical models, experimental evidence points out that electroporation (membrane defect formation under external electric fields) starts to occur within the range of transmembrane voltages that cells may routinely…
The cytoplasm and biomembranes in biological cells contain large numbers of proteins that cyclically change their shapes. They are molecular machines that can function as molecular motors or carry out many other tasks in the cell. We…