Related papers: Topological connection between vesicles and nanotu…
Cells offer numerous inspiring examples where proteins and membranes combine to form complex structures that are key to intracellular compartmentalization, cargo transport, and specialization of cell morphology. Despite this wealth of…
By the combination of optical tweezer manipulation and digital video microscopy, the flexural rigidity of single glycolipid "nano" tubes has been measured below the transition temperature at which the lipid tubules are transformed into…
We propose a mechanism with a low activation energy for lipid translocation, based on a change of topology of the membrane of a protocell. The inner and outer layers are connected and form toroidal nanoholes stabilised by repulsive…
Cells use homeostatic mechanisms to maintain an optimal composition of distinct types of phospholipids in cellular membranes. The hydrophilic dipolar layer at the membrane interface, composed of phospholipid headgroups, regulates the…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
The presence of membrane tubules in living cells is essential to many biological processes. In cells, one mechanism to form nanosized lipid tubules is via molecular motor induced bilayer extraction. In this paper, we describe a simple…
Liquid shells (e.g. double emulsions, vesicles etc.) are susceptible to interfacial instability and rupturing when driven out of mechanical equilibrium. This poses a significant challenge for the design of liquid shell based micro-machines,…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the occupancy and flow of water through nanotubes comprised of hydrophobic and hydrophilic atoms, which are arranged on a honeycomb lattice to mimic functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs). We…
Liquid shells, such as lipid vesicles and soap bubbles, are ubiquitous throughout biology, engineered matter, and everyday life. Their creation and disintegration are defined by a singularity that separates a topologically distinct extended…
We explore the structure of nuclei and topological defects in the first-order phase transition between the nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs). The LCLCs are formed by self-assembled molecular…
Spinodal demixing of systems into two phases having very different viscosities leads to viscoelastic networks, i.e. gels. Here we consider demixing in a colloidal system where one phase is a nematic liquid crystal with a strongly…
Bolaamphiphilesamphiphilic molecules with polar groups at each of the two ends of a hydrophobic tail with pH-sensitive spontaneous molecular curvaturesendow membranes of extremophiles with an exquisite balance between stability (or…
We formulate a simple effective model to describe molecular interactions in a lipid monolayer. The model represents lipid molecules in terms of two-dimensional anisotropic particles on the plane of the monolayer. These particles interact…
Dimensions and molecular structure play pivotal roles in the principle of heat conduction. The dimensional characteristics of solution within nanoscale systems depend on the degrees of confinement. However, the influence of such variations…
We propose the model of a manifold of one-dimensional interacting electron systems to account for the superconductivity observed in ropes of nanotubes. We rely on the strong suppression of single-particle hopping between neighboring…
Using a differential magneto-optical technique to visualize flow of transport currents, we reveal a new delocalization line within the reversible vortex liquid region in the presence of a low density of columnar defects. This line separates…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
We investigated the dynamics of single soft nano-tubes of phospholipids to extract nano-scale information such as size of tube, which are several tens to hundreds of nano-meters thick. The scaling law of the nano-tube dynamics in…
Motor-proteins are responsible for transport inside cells. Harnessing their activity is key towards developing new nano-technologies, or functional biomaterials. Cytoskeleton-like networks, recently tailored in vitro, result from the…
We analyze the effective potential for nanoparticles trapped at a fluid interface within a simple model which incorporates surface and line tensions as well as a thermal average over interface fluctuations (capillary waves). For a single…