Related papers: Shape transition from elliptical to cylindrical me…
We investigate the structural parameters, i.e. bond lengths and bond angles of chiral tubes of various chiralities. The procedure used is based on helical and rotational symmetries and Tersoff potential. The results indicate that at ambient…
Intimately connected to the rule of life, chirality remains a long-time fascination in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. Chiral structures, e.g., nucleic acid and cholesteric phase developed from chiral molecules are common…
Colloidal membranes, self assembled monolayers of aligned rod like molecules, offer a template for designing membranes with definite shapes and curvature, and possibly new functionalities in the future. Often the constituent rods, due to…
Membrane tubes (spicules) arise in cells, or artificial membranes, in the nonlinear deformation regime due to, e.g. the growth of microtubules, actin filaments or sickle hemoglobin fibers towards a membrane. We calculate the axial force…
Monodisperse suspensions of rodlike chiral $fd$ viruses are condensed into a rod-length thick colloidal monolayers of aligned rods by depletion forces. Twist deformations of the molecules are expelled to the monolayer edge as in a chiral…
Many types of peripheral and transmembrane proteins can sense and generate membrane curvature. Laterally isotropic proteins and crescent proteins with twofold rotational symmetry, such as Bin/Amphiphysin/Rvs superfamily proteins, have been…
We study the emergence of helical structures subjected to a stretching force, demonstrating that the force transforms disk-shaped colloidal membranes into twisted chiral ribbons of predetermined handedness. Using an experimental technique…
We study the effects of chiral constituent molecules on the macroscopic shapes attained by lipid bilayer membranes. Such fluid membranes are beautiful examples of statistical ensembles of random shapes, sometimes coupled to in-plane order.…
Many biological and synthetic materials self-assemble into helical or twisted aggregates. The shape is determined by a complex interplay between elastic forces and the orientation and chirality of the constituent molecules. We study this…
A theory of chiral lipid membranes is proposed on the basis of a concise free energy density which includes the contributions of the bending and the surface tension of membranes, as well as the chirality and orientational variation of…
Chiral molecules form a number of non-chiral structures, the simplest being an isotropic fluid phase. In a mesophase of achiral molecules the fluctuations will on average be achiral as well: left-handed twists and right-handed twists will…
The propagation of chirality across scales is a common but poorly understood phenomenon in soft matter. In this work, we use computer simulations to study chiral monolayer assemblies formed by hard rod-like colloidal particles in the…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations of a colloidal fluid membrane composed of chiral rod-like viruses. The membrane is modeled by a triangular mesh of beads connected by bonds in which the bonds and beads are free to move at each Monte…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations on fluid membranes with orientational order and multiple edges in the presence and absence of external forces. The membrane resists bending and has an edge tension, the orientational order couples with…
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…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
Using molecular simulations and classical density functional theory, we study the liquid-crystalline phase behaviour of a series of bent rod-like mesogens with a controlled degree of chirality introduced through a twist at the centre of the…
The intricate shapes of biological membranes such as tubules and membrane stacks are induced by proteins. In this article, we systematically investigate the membrane shapes induced by arc-shaped scaffolds such as proteins and protein…
Biological membranes are shaped by various proteins that either generate inward or outward membrane curvature. In this article, we investigate the membrane morphologies induced by mixtures of arc-shaped particles with coarse-grained…
We study the equilibrium shapes of vesicles, with an in-plane nematic order, using a Monte-Carlo scheme and show that highly curved shapes, like tubes and discs, with a striking similarity to the structures engendered by certain curvature…