Related papers: Antibody binding reports spatial heterogeneities i…
Cellular membranes are a heterogeneous mix of lipids, proteins and small molecules. Special groupings of saturated lipids and cholesterol form a liquid-ordered phase, known as `lipid rafts,' serving as platforms for signaling, trafficking…
Motivated by the fine compositional control observed in membraneless droplet organelles in cells, we investigate how a sharp binding-unbinding transition can occur between multivalent client molecules and receptors embedded in a porous…
We analyze the stability of micro-domains of ligand-receptor bonds that mediate the adhesion of biological model membranes. After evaluating the effects of membrane fluctuations on the binding affinity of a single bond, we characterize the…
The plasma membrane of living cells is compartmentalized at multiple spatial scales ranging from the nano- to the meso-scale. This non-random organization is crucial for a large number of cellular functions. At the nanoscale, cell membranes…
Peripheral membrane proteins can reversibly and specifically bind to biological membranes to carry out functions such as cell signalling, enzymatic activity, or membrane remodelling. Structures of these proteins and of their lipid-binding…
Protein aggregation on the plasma membrane (PM) is of critical importance to many cellular processes such as cell adhesion, endocytosis, fibrillar conformation, and vesicle transport. Lateral diffusion of protein aggregates or clusters on…
The flexibility in the structure of calmodulin (CaM) allows its binding to over 300 target proteins in the cell. To investigate the structure-function relationship of CaM, we combined methods of computer simulation and experiments based on…
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
Inside a cell, heterotypic proteins assemble in inhomogeneous, crowded systems where the abundance of these proteins vary with cell types. While some protein complexes form putative structures that can be visualized with imaging, there are…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
Different cell types aggregate and sort into hierarchical architectures during the formation of animal tissues. The resulting spatial organization depends (in part) on the strength of adhesion of one cell type to itself relative to other…
The complexity of biomolecular interactions necessitates advanced methodologies to accurately capture their behavior in solution. In this work, we focus on monoclonal antibodies and adopt a multi-scale coarse-graining strategy for their…
Protein aggregation in cell membrane is vital for the majority of biological functions. Recent experimental results suggest that transmembrane domains of proteins such as $\alpha$-helices and $\beta$-sheets have different structural…
A broad range of membrane proteins display anomalous diffusion on the cell surface. Different methods provide evidence for obstructed subdiffusion and diffusion on a fractal space, but the underlying structure inducing anomalous diffusion…
Surface molecules, distributed in diverse patterns and clusters on cell membranes, influence vital functions of living cells. It is therefore important to understand their molecular surface organisation under different physiological and…
We study a simplified model of monoclonal antibodies confined in a patchy random porous medium. Antibodies are represented as Y-shaped particles composed of seven tangential hard spheres with attractive patches on the terminal beads, while…
Cell membranes separate the cell interior from the external environment. They are constituted by a variety of lipids; their composition determines the dynamics of membrane proteins and affects the ability of the cells to adapt. Even though…
In experiments on model membranes, a formation of large domains of different lipid composition is readily observed. However, no such phase separation is observed in the membranes of intact cells. Instead, a structure of small transient…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…