Related papers: Critical Phenomena in Plasma Membrane Organization…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
Many of the processes that underly neural computation are carried out by ion channels embedded in the plasma membrane, a two-dimensional liquid that surrounds all cells. Recent experiments have demonstrated that this membrane is poised…
Native membranes of biological cells display melting transitions of their lipids at a temperature of 10-20 degrees below body temperature. Such transitions can be observed in various bacterial cells, in nerves, in cancer cells, but also in…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…
Lipid membranes are abundant in living organisms, where they constitute a surrounding shell for cells and their organelles. There are many circumstances in which the deformations of lipid membranes are involved in living cells: fusion and…
The sustenance of life depends on the high degree of organization that prevails through different levels of living organisms, from subcellular structures such as biomolecular complexes and organelles to tissues and organs. The physical…
The goal of this paper is the identification of the physical processes at the origin of the nonlinear behavior of a plasma conductor when an external constraint gradually departs the system from thermal equilibrium. This reveals the…
A dynamic model for cell differentiation is studied, where cells with internal chemical reaction dynamics interact with each other and replicate. It leads to spontaneous differentiation of cells and determination, as is discussed in the…
Compact plasmas, that exist near black-hole candidates and in gamma ray burst sources, commonly exhibit self-organized non-linear behavior. A model that simulates the non-linear behavior of compact radiative plasmas is constructed directly…
On the phase diagram of a system undergoing a continuous phase transition of the second order, three lines, hyper-surfaces, convergent into the critical point feature prominently: the ordered and disordered phases in the thermodynamic…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
We address the relationship between membrane microheterogeneity and anomalous subdiffusion in cell membranes by carrying out Monte Carlo simulations of two-component lipid membranes. We find that near-critical fluctuations in the membrane…
Liposomes that achieve a heterogeneous and spatially organized surface through phase separation have been recognized to be a promising platform for delivery purposes. However, their design and optimization through experimentation can be…
Membranes containing a wide variety of ternary mixtures of high chain-melting temperature lipids, low chain-melting temperature lipids, and cholesterol undergo lateral phase separartion into coexisting liquid phases at a miscibility…
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.…
We study dynamic heterogeneities in a model glass-former whose overlap with a reference configuration is constrained to a fixed value. The system phase-separates into regions of small and large overlap, so that dynamical correlations remain…
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…
Lipid membranes regulate the flow of materials and information between cells and their organelles. Further, lipid composition and morphology can play a key role in regulating a variety of biological processes. For example, viral uptake,…
The application of systems and control theory to membrane physiology is presented here. Modeling efforts have focused on describing those physiologically realistic mechanisms which govern the regulation of membrane permeability in nerve.…