Related papers: Control of superselectivity by crowding in three-d…
We present a study on connectivity percolation in suspensions of hard platelets by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We interpret our results using a contact-volume argument based on an effective single--particle cell model. It is commonly…
We demonstrate how concepts of statistical mechanics of interacting particles can have important implications in the choice of interaction potentials to model qualitative properties of cell aggregates in theoretical biology. We illustrate…
The spatio-temporal organization of proteins and the associated morphological changes in membranes are of importance in cell signaling. Several mechanisms that promote the aggregation of proteins at low cell surface concentrations have been…
Combining simulations and theory I study the interplay between bundle elastic degrees of freedom and crosslink binding propensity. By slowly driving bundles into a deformed configuration, and depending on the mechanical stiffness of the…
We examine the influence of density on the transition between chain and spiral structures in planar assemblies of active semiflexible filaments, utilizing detailed numerical simulations. We focus on how increased density, and higher…
Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we systematically study the effect of chain stiffness on the packing ability of linear polymers composed of hard spheres in extremely confined monolayers, corresponding effectively to 2D films.…
Collective cell motility plays central roles in various biological phenomena such as inflammatory response, wound healing, cancer metastasis and embryogenesis. These are biological demonstrations of the unjamming transition. However,…
Nanoparticles functionalized with multiple ligands can be programmed to bind biological targets depending on the receptors they express, providing a general mechanism exploited in various technologies, from selective drug-delivery to…
Harnessing the topology of ring polymers as a design motif in functional nanomaterials is becoming a promising direction in the field of soft matter. For example, the ring topology of DNA plasmids prevents the relaxation of excess twist…
Macromolecules can form regular structures on inert surfaces. We have developed a combined empirical and modeling approach to derive the bonding. From experimental scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of structures formed on Au(111)…
Here, we show by solution nuclear magnetic resonance measurements that the urea-unfolded protein apoazurin becomes elongated when the synthetic crowding agent dextran 20 is present, in contrast to the prediction from the macromolecular…
We model the behaviour of a single colloid embedded in a cross-linked polymer gel, immersed in a viscous background fluid. External fields actuate the particle into a periodic motion, which deforms the embedding matrix and creates a local…
We present a model for diffusion in a molecularly crowded environment. The model consists of random barriers in percolation network. Random walks in the presence of slowly moving barriers show normal diffusion for long times, but anomalous…
The hydrodynamic effects of macromolecular crowding inside cells is often studied in vitro by using polymers as crowding reagents. Confinement of polymers inside cell-sized droplets has been shown to affect the diffusion of small molecules.…
Living organisms rely on molecular networks, such as gene circuits and signaling pathways, for information processing and robust decision-making in crowded, noisy environments. Recent advances show that interacting biomolecules…
We derive an analytical pair potential of mean force for Brownian molecules in the liquid-state. Our approach accounts for many-particle correlations of crowding particles of the liquid, and for diffusive transport across the spatially…
The density of synaptic receptors in front of presynaptic release sites is stabilized in the presence of scaffold proteins, but the receptors and scaffold molecules have local exchanges with characteristic times shorter than that of the…
We present Monte Carlo computer simulations for melts of semiflexible randomly knotted and randomly concatenated ring polymers on the fcc lattice and in slit confinement. Through systematic variation of the slit width at fixed melt density,…
Microtubules are an essential physical building block of cellular systems. They are organized using specific crosslinkers, motors, and influencers of nucleation and growth. With the addition of anti-parallel crosslinkers, microtubule…
Achieving and controlling strong light-matter interactions in many-body systems is of paramount importance both for fundamental understanding and potential applications. In this paper we demonstrate both experimentally and theoretically how…