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We study lipid translocation ("flip-flop") between the leaflets of a planar lipid bilayer with transition path sampling (TPS). Rare flip-flops compete with biological machineries that actively establish asymmetric lipid compositions.…
Microgels are elastic and deformable particles with a hybrid nature between that of polymers and colloids and unconventional behaviours with respect to hard colloids. We investigated the dynamics of a soft microgel made of interpenetrated…
Hard spheres in Newtonian fluids serve as paradigms for Non-Newtonian materials phenomena exhibited by colloidal suspensions. A recent experimental study (Cheng et al. 2011 Science, 333, 1276) showed that upon application of shear to such a…
Understanding interactions between membranes requires measurements on well-controlled systems close to natural conditions, in which fluctuations play an important role. We have determined, by grazing incidence X-ray scattering, the…
Soft interfaces formed by lipid membranes are fundamental to living cells, synthetic cells, and membrane-based soft materials. However, a quantitative framework linking molecular organization with nonlinear interfacial mechanics remains…
We study analytically the dynamics of two-dimensional rectangular lattices with periodic boundary conditions. We consider anisotropic initial data supported on one low-frequency Fourier mode. We show that, in the continuous approximation,…
We explore the microstructure and phase behavior of confined soft colloids which can actively switch their interactions at a predefined kinetic rate. For this, we employ a reaction-diffusion approach based on a reactive dynamical…
We study the dynamic structure of lipid domain inclusions embedded within a phase-separated reconstituted lipid bilayer in contact with a swarming flow of gliding filamentous actin. Passive circular domains transition into highly-deformed…
We construct a theoretical model for the dynamics of a microscale colloidal particle, modeled as an interval, moving horizontally on a DNA-coated surface, modelled as a line coated with springs that can stick to the interval. Averaging over…
Here, we provide an overview of theoretical approaches to semiflexible polymers and their networks. Such semiflexible polymers have large bending rigidities that can compete with the entropic tendency of a chain to crumple up into a random…
Morphogenesis involves the transformation of initially simple shapes, such as multicellular spheroids, into more complex $3D$ shapes. These shape changes are governed by mechanical forces including molecular motor-generated forces as well…
Jammed packings of repulsive elastic spheres have emerged as a rich model system within which elastic properties of disordered glassy materials may be elucidated. Most of the work on these packings have focused on the case of vanishing…
Functionalization of nanoparticles or colloids is increasingly being used to develop customizable "atoms". Functionalization by attaching single strands of DNA allows for direct control of the binding between nanoparticles, since…
Signatures of glassy dynamics have been identified experimentally for a rich variety of materials in which molecular networks provide rigidity. Here we present a theoretical framework to study the glassy behavior of both passive and active…
Time-resolved single-molecule biophysical experiments yield data that contain a wealth of dynamic information, in addition to the equilibrium distributions derived from histograms of the time series. In typical force spectroscopic setups…
Embedding magnetic colloidal particles in an elastic polymer matrix leads to smart soft materials that can reversibly be addressed from outside by external magnetic fields. We discover a pronounced nonlinear superelastic stress-strain…
In soft matter systems the local displacement field can be accessed directly by video microscopy enabling one to compute local strain fields and hence the elastic moduli using a coarse-graining procedure. We study this process for a simple…
Supported Lipid Bilayers (SLBs) are model membranes formed at solid substrate surfaces. This architecture renders the membrane experimentally accessible to surface sensitive techniques used to study their properties, including Atomic Force…
Long, elastic filaments cross-linked and deformed by active molecular motors occur in various natural settings. The overall macroscopic mechanical response of such a composite network depends on the coupling between the active and the…
The complex configurations of dynamic friction patterns-regarding real time contact areas- are transformed into appropriate networks. With this transformation of a system to network space, many properties can be inferred about the structure…