Related papers: Antibody binding reports spatial heterogeneities i…
Charges and their contribution to protein-protein interactions are essential for the key structural and dynamic properties of monoclonal antibody (mAb) solutions. In fact, they influence the apparent molecular weight, the static structure…
In living cells, protein-rich condensates can wet the cell membrane and surfaces of membrane-bound organelles. Interestingly, many phase-separating proteins also bind to membranes leading to a molecular layer of bound molecules. Here we…
In many cellular signaling pathways, key components form clusters at the cell membrane. Although much work has focused on the mechanisms behind such cluster formation, the implications for downstream signaling remain poorly understood.…
The conformation and the phase diagram of a membrane protein are investigated via grand canonical ensemble approach using a homopolymer model. We discuss the nature and pathway of $\alpha$-helix integration into the membrane that results…
Microtubules are an essential physical building block of cellular systems. They are organized using specific crosslinkers, motors, and influencers of nucleation and growth. With the addition of anti-parallel crosslinkers, microtubule…
Molecules with an excess number of hydrogen-bonding partners play a crucial role in fundamental chemical processes, ranging from the anomalous diffusion in supercooled water to the transport of aqueous proton defects and the ordering of…
The genomic DNA of bacteria occupies only a fraction of the cell called the nucleoid, although it is not bounded by any membrane and would occupy a volume hundreds of times larger than the cell in the absence of constraints. The two most…
The organization of lipids in biological membranes is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is how to control lateral lipid composition in supported membranes which are…
The physical and chemical environment inside cells is of fundamental importance to all life but has traditionally been difficult to determine on a subcellular basis. Here we combine cutting-edge genomically integrated FRET biosensing to…
The hydrodynamic effects of macromolecular crowding inside cells is often studied in vitro by using polymers as crowding reagents. Confinement of polymers inside cell-sized droplets has been shown to affect the diffusion of small molecules.…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
Self-assembly of protein monomers into distinct membrane protein oligomers provides a general mechanism for diversity in the molecular architectures, and resulting biological functions, of membrane proteins. We develop a general physical…
Lipid phase heterogeneity in the plasma membrane is thought to be crucial for many aspects of cell signaling, but the physical basis of participating membrane domains such as "lipid rafts" remains controversial. Here we consider a lattice…
We describe the representation of the chemical affinity between the antigen-combining site of the immunoglobulin molecule and the antigen molecule as the probability of the two molecules existing in a bound state. Our model is based on the…
Single molecule probes are widely used to characterize dynamic heterogeneity in glass forming liquids, but interpreting probe dynamics remains challenging because the measured response depends on how the probe couples to its host…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids diffuse in a highly crowded and heterogeneous landscape, where aggregates and dense domains of proteins or lipids obstruct the path of diffusing molecules. In general, hindered motion gives rise to…
Water provides the driving force for the assembly and stability of many cellular components. Despite its impact on biological functions, a nanoscale understanding of the relationship between its structure and dynamics under soft confinement…
Using computer simulations we show that lipid membranes can mediate linear aggregation of spherical nanoparticles binding to it for a wide range of biologically relevant bending rigidities. This result is in net contrast with the isotropic…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…