Related papers: Vesiculation mechanisms mediated by anisotropic pr…
In recent years, extracellular vesicles such have become promising carriers as the next-generation drug delivery platforms. Effective loading of exogenous cargos without compromising the extracellular vesicle membrane is a major challenge.…
Protein-protein interactions comprise both transport and reaction steps. During the transport step, anisotropy of proteins and their complexes is important both for hydrodynamic diffusion and accessibility of the binding site. Using a…
Capturing the emergence of deformation waves in contractile living tissues is a challenge that has recently been tackled with models of actively deformable particles. Inspired by the anisotropic deformation of cardiomyocytes in cardiac…
Autophagy is an intracellular degradation process that employs complex membrane dynamics to isolate and break down cellular components. However, many unanswered questions remain concerning remodeling of autophagic membranes. Here, we focus…
We examine the deformation of homogeneous spherical fluid vesicles along their equator by a circular rigid ring. We consider deformations preserving the axial and equatorial mirror symmetries of the vesicles. The configurations of the…
Important cellular processes, such as cell motility and cell division, are coordinated by cell polarity, which is determined by the non-uniform distribution of certain proteins. Such protein patterns form via an interplay of protein…
Cells often migrate on curved surfaces inside the body, such as curved tissues, blood vessels or highly curved protrusions of other cells. Recent \textit{in-vitro} experiments provide clear evidence that motile cells are affected by the…
We examine the budding of a nanoscale particle through a lipid bilayer using molecular dynamics simulations, free energy calculations, and an elastic theory, with the aim of determining the extent to which equilibrium elasticity theory can…
Fluid-resistance limited transport of vesicles through narrow constrictions is a recurring theme in many biological and engineering applications. Inspired by the motor-driven movement of soft membrane-bound vesicles into closed neuronal…
Entropy drives the phase behavior of colloids ranging from dense suspensions of hard spheres or rods to dilute suspensions of hard spheres and depletants. Entropic ordering of anisotropic shapes into complex crystals, liquid crystals, and…
We present a new lattice model for proteins that incorporates a tube-like anisotropy by introducing a preference for mutually parallel alignments in the conformations. The model is demonstrated to capture many aspects of real proteins.
Cell spreading and motility on an adhesive substrate are driven by the active physical forces generated by the actin cytoskeleton. We have recently shown that coupling curved membrane complexes to protrusive forces, exerted by the actin…
Biological cells are able to generate intricate structures and respond to external stimuli, sculpting their membrane from within. Simplified biomimetic systems can aid in understanding the principles which govern these shape changes and…
Recently described stochastic models of protein evolution have demonstrated that the inclusion of structural information in addition to amino acid sequences leads to a more reliable estimation of evolutionary parameters. We present a…
We study a synthetic system of motile Escherichia coli bacteria encapsulated inside giant lipid vesicles. Forces exerted by the bacteria on the inner side of the membrane are sufficient to extrude membrane tubes filled with one or several…
Recent theoretical advances in elasticity of membranes following Helfrich's famous spontaneous curvature model are summarized in this review. The governing equations describing equilibrium configurations of lipid vesicles, lipid membranes…
Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones in response to chemical signals secreted by, for example, a wound or a tumour. In this paper, we propose a mesoscopic lattice-based model of angiogenesis, in which…
The ability to computationally generate novel yet physically foldable protein structures could lead to new biological discoveries and new treatments targeting yet incurable diseases. Despite recent advances in protein structure prediction,…
Biological cells can actively tune their intracellular architecture according to their overall shape. Here we explore the rheological implication of such coupling in a minimal model of a dense cellular material where each cell exerts an…
The intricate shapes of biological membranes such as tubules and membrane stacks are induced by proteins. In this article, we systematically investigate the membrane shapes induced by arc-shaped scaffolds such as proteins and protein…