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Surfaces formed by extracellular polymeric substances enclosing individual and some small communities of {\it Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans} on plates of hydrophobic silicon and hydrophilic mica are analyzed by means of atomic force…
In many viruses, hundreds of proteins assemble an outer shell (capsid) around the viral nucleic acid to form an infectious virion. How the assembly process selects the viral genome amidst a vast excess of diverse cellular nucleic acids is…
Soft particles can be better emulsifiers than hard particles because they stretch at fluid interfaces. This deformation can increase adsorption energies by orders of magnitude relative to rigid particles. The deformation of a particle at an…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
Entry of micro- or nano-sized objects into cells or vesicles made of lipid membranes occur in many processes such as entry of viruses in host cells, microplastics pollution, drug delivery or biomedical imaging. Here, we investigated the…
The endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a cellular organelle that forms a cell-spanning network of tubes and sheets, is an important location of protein synthesis and folding. When the ER experiences sustained unfolded protein stress, IRE1 proteins…
Minimal energy shapes of closed, elastic shells with twelve pentagonal disclinations introduced in otherwise hexagonally coordinated crystalline lattice are studied. The geometry and the total energy of shells are studied as a function of…
The prediction of the three-dimensional native structure of proteins from the knowledge of their amino acid sequence, known as the protein folding problem, is one of the most important yet unsolved issues of modern science. Since the…
There has been an increasing recognition of the utility of models of the spatial dynamics of viral spread within tissues. Multicellular models, where cells are represented as discrete regions of space coupled to a virus density surface, are…
In living cells, proteins self-assemble into large functional structures based on specific interactions between molecularly complex patches. Due to this complexity, protein self-assembly results from a competition between a large number of…
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…
Viroporins are small viral proteins that oligomerize in the membrane of host cells and induce the formation of hydrophilic pores in these membranes, thus altering the physiological properties of the host cells. Due to their significance for…
Budding allows virus replication and macromolecular secretion in cells. It involves the formation of a bud, i.e. an outgrowth from the cell membrane that evolves into an envelope. The largest energetic barrier to bud formation is membrane…
Nanoparticles introduced in living cells are capable of strongly promoting the aggregation of peptides and proteins. We use here molecular dynamics simulations to characterise in detail the process by which nanoparticle surfaces catalyse…
Biological membranes typically contain a large number of different components dispersed in small concentrations in the main membrane phase, including proteins, sugars, and lipids of varying geometrical properties. Most of these components…
Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of…
Phagocytosis is a fundamental process of the innate immune system, yet the physical determinants that govern the engulfment of soft, deformable targets remain poorly understood. Existing theoretical models typically approximate targets as…
We develop a clear theoretical description of radial swelling in virus-like particles which delineates the importance of electrostatic contributions to swelling in absence of any conformational changes. The model couples the elastic…
Cancer cell invasion is recognised as one of the hallmarks of cancer and involves several inner-related multiscale processes that ultimately contribute to its spread into the surrounding tissue. In order to gain a deeper understanding of…
During embryonic development, regeneration and homeostasis, cells have to physically integrate into their target tissues, where they ultimately execute their function. Despite a significant body of research on how mechanical forces instruct…