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Macromolecular crowding affects biophysical processes as diverse as diffusion, gene expression, cell growth, and senescence. Yet, there is no comprehensive understanding of how crowding affects reactions, particularly multivalent binding.…
Tissues and organs are composed of distinct cell types that must operate in concert to perform physiological functions. Efforts to create high-dimensional biomarker catalogs of these cells are largely based on transcriptomic single-cell…
Central to understanding membrane bound cell signaling is to quantify how the membrane ultra-structure consisting of transient spatial domains modulates signaling and how the signaling influences this ultra-structure. Yet, measuring the…
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…
Membrane organization is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is to understand the lateral heterogeneous structures in membranes and membrane fluidity in the presence of…
Spatial heterogeneity is a hallmark of living systems, even at the molecular scale in individual cells. A key example is the partitioning of membrane-bound proteins via lipid domain formation or cytoskeleton-induced corralling. Yet the…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids are organized into sub-micrometric nanodomains of varying size, shape and composition, performing specific functions. Despite their biological importance, the detailed morphology of these nanodomains…
The adhesion of cells is mediated by receptors and ligands anchored in apposing membranes. A central question is how to characterize the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules. For soluble molecules, the binding affinity is…
Unravelling the physical mechanisms behind the organisation of lipid domains is a central goal in cell biology and membrane biophysics. Previous studies on cells and model lipid bilayers featuring phase-separated domains found an intricate…
Unlike their model membrane counterparts, biological membranes are richly decorated with a heterogeneous assembly of membrane proteins. These proteins are so tightly packed that their excluded area interactions can alter the free energy…
Measuring the oligomerization of plasma membrane proteins is rife with biophysical and biomedical implications. This is particularly true for GPCRs, a large family of proteins representing the targets of over one third of all FDA approved…
Diffusion in the crowded environments of the biological membranes or materials interfaces often involves intermittent binding to surface proteins or defects. To account for this situation we study a 2-dimensional lattice gas in a field of…
The spatial structure of the cell is highly organized at all levels: from small complexes and assemblies, to local nano- and micro-clusters, to global, micrometer scales across and between cells. We suggest that this multiscale spatial cell…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
The membrane curvature of cells and intracellular compartments continuously adapts to enable cells to perform vital functions, from cell division to signal trafficking. Understanding how membrane geometry affects these processes in vivo is…
In a cellular medium, the plasmic membrane is a place of interactions between the cell and its direct external environment. A classic model describes it as a fluid mosaic. The fluid phase of the membrane allows a lateral degree of freedom…
Over the past decade, advances in super-resolution microscopy and particle-based modeling have driven an intense interest in investigating spatial heterogeneity at the level of single molecules in cells. Remarkably, it is becoming clear…
The spatiotemporal organisation of proteins and lipids on the cell surface has direct functional consequences for signaling, sorting and endocytosis. Earlier studies have shown that multiple types of membrane proteins including…
The activity of cell membrane inclusions (such as ion channels) is influenced by the host lipid membrane, to which they are elastically coupled. This coupling concerns the hydrophobic thickness of the bilayer (imposed by the length of the…
Lateral organization in the plane of the plasma membrane is an important driver of biological processes. The past dozen years have seen increasing experimental support for the notion that lipid organization plays an important role in…