Related papers: Acetaminophen Interactions with Phospholipid Vesic…
Recent molecular dynamics simulations (Herce and Garcia, PNAS, 104: 20805 (2007)) have suggested that the arginine-rich HIV Tat peptides might be able to translocate by destabilizing and inducing transient pores in phospholipid bilayers. In…
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by dementia and memory loss in the elderly population. The amyloid-$\beta$ peptide (A$\beta$ 1-42) is one of the main pathogenic factors in AD and is known to cause…
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…
Experimental evidence suggests that the folding and aggregation of the amyloid $\beta$-protein (A$\beta$) into oligomers is a key pathogenetic event in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Inhibiting the pathologic folding and oligomerization of…
Biological membranes are known to form various structural motifs, from lipid bilayers to tubular filaments and networks facilitating e.g. adhesion and cell-cell communication. To understand the biophysical processes underpinning lipid-lipid…
The cytoplasm and biomembranes in biological cells contain large numbers of proteins that cyclically change their shapes. They are molecular machines that can function as molecular motors or carry out many other tasks in the cell. We…
The remarkable preference of biomembranes, to constitute vesicles of certain discrete sizes is explained by using the following properties of phospholipids that are either well understood or at least documented. A. By hexagonal…
The rapid emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria demands development of novel and effective antimicrobial agents. Structurally Nanoengineered Antimicrobial Peptide Polymers (SNAPPs), characterized by their unique star-shaped…
Atherosclerotic plaques form in artery walls due to a chronic inflammatory response driven by lipid accumulation. A key component of the inflammatory response is the interaction between monocyte-derived macrophages and extracellular lipid.…
We monitored the action of phospholipase A2 (PLA2) on L- and D-dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) Langmuir monolayers by mounting a Langmuir-trough on a wide-field fluorescence microscope with single molecule sensitivity. This made it…
A coarse-grained model developed by Marrink et al. [J. Phys. Chem. B 111, 7812 (2007)] is applied to investigate vesiculation of lipid [dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)] droplets in water. Three kinds of morphologies of micelles are…
We investigate the electronic structure and chemical activity of rippled phosphorene induced by large compressive strains via first-principles calculation. It is found that phosphorene is extraordinarily bendable, enabling the accommodation…
Recently, Rozovsky et al. reported on the morphology and dynamics of superstructures in three-component lipid bilayers containing saturated and unsaturated lipids as well as cholesterol [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 36 (2005)]. We comment that…
A swollen phase, in which the mean repeat distance of lipid bilayers is larger than the other phases, is found between the liquid-crystalline phase and the interdigitated gel phase in DPPC aqueous solution. Temperature, pressure and ethanol…
Some anesthetics bind and potentiate gamma-aminobutyric-acid-type receptors, but no universal mechanism for general anesthesia is known. Furthermore, often encountered complications such as anesthesia induced amnesia are not understood.…
The electrostatic contribution to spontaneous membrane curvature is calculated within Poisson-Boltzmann theory under a variety of assumptions and emphasizing parameters in the physiological range. Asymmetric surface charges, either fixed…
Polymers are a primary building block in many biomaterials, often interacting with anisotropic backgrounds. While previous studies have considered polymer dynamics within nematic solvents, rarely are the the effects of anisotropic viscosity…
We present atomistic molecular dynamics results for fully hydrated bilayers composed of ceramide NS-24:0, free fatty acid 24:0 and cholesterol, to address the effect of the different components in the stratum corneum (the outermost layer of…
Whether live cell membranes show miscibility phase transitions (MPTs), and if so, how they fluctuate near the transitions remain outstanding unresolved issues in physics and biology alike. Motivated by these questions we construct a generic…
A large and diverse array of small hydrophobic molecules induce general anesthesia. Their efficacy as anesthetics has been shown to correlate both with their affinity for a hydrophobic environment and with their potency in inhibiting…