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The deformability of vesicles critically influences their engulfment by lipid membranes, a process central to endocytosis, viral entry, drug delivery, and intercellular transport. While theoretical models have long predicted this influence,…
Relatively short peptides, such as toxins and antimicrobial-peptides, are known to insert themselves into cell membranes. On the basis of simple bead-spring models for the membrane lipids, the peptide, and water, detailed processes of the…
The ability to design artificial micro/nanomachines able to perform sophisticated tasks crucially depends on the understanding of their interaction with biosystems and their compatibility with the biological environment. Here, Janus…
Transport of microscopic objects across biological membranes usually involves membrane deformation to enclose the object followed by detachment of the engulfed particle. However, in artificial membranes, this last topological remodelling…
The viscosity of lipid bilayer membranes plays an important role in determining the diffusion constant of embedded proteins and the dynamics of membrane deformations, yet it has historically proven very difficult to measure. Here we…
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…
The interplay of membrane proteins is vital for many biological processes, such as cellular transport, cell division, and signal transduction between nerve cells. Theoretical considerations have led to the idea that the membrane itself…
A very common strategy to penetrate the cell membrane and access the internal compartment, consists of using sharp tips or nano needles. However recent experiments of cell penetration by atomic force microscopy tips show, contrary to…
Enhanced manipulation and analysis of bio-particles using light confined in nano-scale dielectric structures has proceeded apace in the last several years. Small mode volumes, along with the lack of a need for bulky optical elements give…
We describe several unexpected phenomena, caused by a solid-solid phase transition (gel-to-crystal) typical for all main classes of lipid substances - phospholipids, triglycerides, diglycerides, alkanes, etc. We discovered that this…
How internal forces are transduced into motion through soft, fluid membranes remains a fundamental question in the study of active systems. To investigate this coupling, we develop a minimal system consisting of a single ferromagnetic…
Lipid bilayers forming biological membranes are known to behave as viscous 2D fluids on submicrometer scales; usually they contain a large number of active protein inclusions. Recently, it has been shown [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112,…
Modeling membrane interactions with arbitrarily shaped colloidal particles, such as environmental micro- and nanoplastics, at the cell scale remains particularly challenging, owing to the complexity of particle geometries and the need to…
Cellular uptake through the lipid membranes plays an important role in adsorbing nutrients and fighting infection and can be used for drug delivery and nanomedicine developments. Endocytosis is one of the known pathways of the cellular…
We use a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation to investigate the interaction between neutral or charged nanoparticles (NPs) and a vesicle consisting of neutral and negatively charged lipids. We focus on the interaction strengths of…
Liposome vesicles tend to align with an applied magnetic field. This is due to the directional magnetic susceptibility difference of the lipids which form the membrane of these vesicles. In this work a model of liposome vesicles exposed to…
Many biological systems fold thin sheets of lipid membrane into complex three-dimensional structures. This microscopic origami is often mediated by the adsorption and self-assembly of proteins on a membrane. As a model system to study…
"Necks" are features of lipid membranes characterized by an uniquley large curvature, functioning as bridges between different compartments. These features are ubiquitous in the life-cycle of the cell and instrumental in processes such as…
We explore the interplay of membrane curvature and nonspecific binding due to excluded-volume effects among colloidal particles inside lipid bilayer vesicles. We trapped submicron spheres of two different sizes inside a pear-shaped,…
Lipid nanoparticles own a remarkable potential in nanomedicine, only partially disclosed. While the clinical use of liposomes and cationic lipid-nucleic acid complexes is well-established, liquid lipid nanoparticles (nanoemulsions), solid…