Related papers: Heterogeneous biological membranes regulate protei…
The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments.…
Using analytical calculations and computer simulations we consider both the lateral diffusion of a membrane protein and the fluctuation spectrum of the membrane in which the protein is embedded. The membrane protein interacts with the…
We investigate proteins within heterogeneous cell membranes where non-equilibrium phenomena arises from spatial variations in concentration and temperature. We develop simulation methods building on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to…
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 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…
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…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
The phase behavior of membrane proteins stems from a complex synergy with the amphiphilic molecules required for their solubilization. We show that ionization of a pH-sensitive surfactant, LDAO, bound to a bacterial photosynthetic protein,…
Lateral diffusion of molecules on surfaces plays a very important role in various biological processes, including lipid transport across the cell membrane, synaptic transmission and other phenomena such as exo- and endocytosis, signal…
Morphological change of bilayer membrane in vivo is not a spontaneous procedure but modulated by various types of proteins in general. Most of these modulations are associated with the localization of related proteins in the crowded lipid…
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…
Phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins is important for the formation of membraneless organelles, or biomolecular condensates, which play key roles in the regulation of biochemical processes within cells. In this work, we…
We introduce a simulation strategy to consistently couple continuum biomembrane dynamics to the motion of discrete biological macromolecules residing within or on the membrane. The methodology is used to study the diffusion of integral…
Membrane proteins often form dimers and higher-order oligomers whose stability and spatial organization depend sensitively on their lipid environment. To investigate the physical principles underlying this coupling, we employ a lattice…
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…
Motivated by single-molecule experiments on synaptic membrane protein domains, we use a stochastic lattice model to study protein reaction and diffusion processes in crowded membranes. We find that the stochastic reaction-diffusion dynamics…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
In living cells, proteins involved in specialized biochemical functions are often spatially organized within biomolecular condensates. Increasing evidence suggests that some of these condensates, including DNA repair condensates, emerge…
Proteins and nucleic acids can spontaneously self-assemble into membraneless droplet-like compartments, both in vitro and in vivo. A key component of these droplets are multi-valent proteins that possess several adhesive domains with…
We consider the hydrodynamics of lipid bilayers containing transmembrane proteins of arbitrary shape. This biologically-motivated problem is relevant to the cell membrane, whose fluctuating dynamics play a key role in phenomena ranging from…