Related papers: Molecular structure in biomolecular condensates
A theoretical study of the structure formation observed very recently [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 128303 (2003)] in binary colloids is presented. In our model solely the dipole-dipole interaction of the particles is considered,…
It has recently been shown that identical, isotropic particles can form complex crystals and quasicrystals. In order to understand the relation between the particle interaction and the structure, which it stabilizes, the phase behavior of a…
Electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction studies of dormant E. coli cells revealed several forms of nucleoid condensation: quasi - nanocrystalline, quasi -liquid crystalline (or spore-like) and folded nucleosome - like structure. Of…
Microphase separation of membrane components is thought to play an important role in many physiological processes, from cell signaling to endocytosis and cellular trafficking. Here, we study how variations in the membrane composition can be…
Self-assembly is a key process in living systems - from the microscopic biological level (e.g. assembly of proteins into fibrils within biomolecular condensates in a human cell) through to the macroscopic societal level (e.g. assembly of…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is the mechanism underlying the formation of biomolecular condensates. Disordered protein regions often drive phase separation, but molecular interactions of disordered protein regions are not well understood,…
We study two mechanisms for the formation of protein patterns near membranes of living cells by mathematical modelling. Self-assembly of protein domains by electrostatic lipid-protein interactions is contrasted with self-organization due to…
Mapping between sequence and structure is currently an open problem in structural biology. Despite many experimental and computational efforts it is not clear yet how the structure is encoded in the sequence. Answering this question may…
Motivated by the formation of ring-like filament structures in the cortex of plant and animal cells, we study the dynamics of a two-dimensional layer of cytoskeletal filaments and motor proteins near a surface by a general continuum theory.…
Carefully tuned composite materials can have properties wholly unlike their separate constituents. We review the development of one example: colloid-stabilized emulsions with bicontinuous liquid domains. These non-equilibrium structures…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Rafts, or functional domains, are transient nano- or mesoscopic structures in the plasma membrane and are thought to be essential for many cellular processes such as signal transduction, adhesion, trafficking and lipid/protein sorting.…
Coarsening, the process where larger structures grow at the expense of smaller ones, is a fundamental aspect of multiphase systems. The cell cytoplasm exemplifies an out-of-equilibrium multiphase system, where phase-separated condensates…
Biomolecular condensates play essential roles in cellular processes, and recent efforts have focused on understanding their assembly and rational design principles. In this study, we have employed an explicit-solvent minimal statistical…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
The interplay between bacterial chromosome organization and functions such as transcription and replication can be studied in increasing detail using novel experimental techniques. Interpreting the resulting quantitative data, however, can…
Structure-function relationships constitute an important tool to investigate the fundamental principles of molecular electronics. Most commonly, this involves identifying a potentially important molecular structural element, followed by…
We perform simulations of a system containing simple model proteins and a polymer representing chromatin. We study the interplay between protein-protein and protein-chromatin interactions, and the resulting condensates which arise due to…
Complex behavior in glassforming liquids is associated with formation of a mosaic of different structures. Using bond order parameters together with topological characteristics of the bond network, we show that in the mosaic of crystalline…