Related papers: Modeling membrane morphological change during auto…
The kinetic process of mechanical amorphization plays a central role in tailoring material properties. Therefore, a quantitative understanding of how this process depends on loading parameters is critical for optimizing mechanical…
Since its foundations, more than one hundred years ago, the field of structural biology has strived to understand and analyze the properties of molecules and their interactions by studying the structure that they take in 3D space. However,…
We study a dynamical curvature instability caused by a local chemical modification of a phospholipid membrane. In our experiments, a basic solution is microinjected close to a giant unilamellar vesicle, which induces a local chemical…
The formation of microparticles requires the bending of the plasma membrane away from the cytosol. The capcity of the cell membrane to form a microparticle, and the rate of membrane deformation, are controlled by multiple factors, including…
The use of reduced models for investigating the self-assembly dynamics underlying protein shell formation in spherical viruses is described. The spontaneous self-assembly of these polyhedral, supramolecular structures, in which icosahedral…
This study develops an equation for describing three-dimensional membrane transformation through proliferation of its component cells regulated by morphogen density distributions on the membrane. The equation is developed in a…
Morphological trends in growing colonies of living cells are at the core of physiological and evolutionary processes. Using active gel equations, which include cell division, we show that shape changes during the growth can be regulated by…
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…
Soluble alpha-amylases play an important role in the catabolism of polysaccharides. In this work, we show that the enzyme can interact with the lipid membrane and further alter its mechanical properties. Vesicle fluctuation spectroscopy is…
Cellular uptake of nanoplastics is instrumental in their environmental accumulation and transfer to humans through the food chain. Despite extensive studies using spherical plastic nanoparticles, the influence of the morphological…
Self-encapsulated droplets floating at an oil--air interface undergo striking shape changes during evaporation, including flattening and localized loss of membrane tension leading to crumpling and wrinkling. Here we combine experiments,…
A phase field model for dealing with shape instabilities in fluid membrane vesicles is presented. This model takes into account the Canham-Helfrich bending energy with spontaneous curvature. A dynamic equation for the phase-field is also…
A model describing cell membranes as optimal shapes with regard to the $L^2$-deficit of their mean curvature to a given constant called spontaneous curvature is considered. It is shown that the corresponding energy functional is lower…
We analyze the changes in the vicinal acidity (pH) at a spherical amphiphilic membrane. The membrane is assumed to contain solvent accessible, embedded, dissociable, charge regulated moieties. Basing our approach on the linear…
During the early-stages of embryo development, morphogenesis--- the emergence of shape and form in living organisms--- is almost exclusively associated with monolayers of tightly bound epithelial cells. To understand how such tissues change…
Actomyosin actively generates contractile forces that provide the plasma membrane with the deformation stresses essential to carry out biological processes. Although the contractile property of purified actomyosin has been extensively…
Soft materials with layered structure such as membranes, block copolymers, and smectics exhibit intriguing morphologies with nontrivial curvatures. We report on restructuring the Gaussian and mean curvatures of smectic A films with free…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
Interfaces between stratified epithelia and their supporting stromas commonly exhibit irregular shapes. Undulations are particularly pronounced in dysplastic tissues and typically evolve into long, finger-like protrusions in carcinomas. In…
Morphologies of a vesicle confined in a spherical vesicle were explored experimentally by fast confocal laser microscopy and numerically by a dynamically-triangulated membrane model with area-difference elasticity. The confinement was found…