Related papers: Spiralling molecular structures and chiral selecti…
Nanoscale membrane assemblies of sphingolipids, cholesterol, and certain proteins, also known as lipid rafts, play a crucial role in facilitating a broad range of important cell functions. Whereas on living cell membranes lipid rafts have…
Chirality in condensed matter is now a topic of the utmost importance because of its significant role in the understanding and mastering of a large variety of new fundamental physicals mechanisms. Versatile experimental approaches, capable…
In this study, we present a comprehensive exploration of formation of different phases in lipid molecules using a coarse-grained implicit solvent model, where each lipid molecule is represented as a rigid, three-bead rod-like structure. Our…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
Cells are defined by lipid membranes that differ in their structure across the tree of life. While the membranes of most bacteria and eukaryotes consist of single-headed bilayer lipids, the membranes of archaea are composed of mixtures of…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…
The connection between membrane inhomogeneity and the structural basis of lipid rafts has sparked interest in the lateral organization of model lipid bilayers of two and three components. In an effort to investigate anisotropic lipid…
Molecular chirality is a geometric property that is of great importance in chemistry, biology, and medicine. Recently, plasmonic nanostructures that exhibit distinct chiroptical responses have attracted tremendous interest, given their…
Recent advances in high-resolution experimental methods have highlighted the significance of cell signal pathway crosstalk and localised signalling activity in the development and disease of numerous biological systems. The investigation of…
Phospholipid monolayers at the air-water interface serve as model systems for various biological interfaces, e.g. lung surfactant layers and outer leaflets of cell membranes. Although the dynamical (viscoelastic) properties of these…
Langmuir monolayers are advantageous systems used to investigate how lipid membranes get involved in the physiology of many living structures, such as collapse phenomena in alveolar structures. Much work focuses on characterizing the…
Giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) composed of as few as three lipid species can phase separate into small-scale lipid domains with stripes and dots patterns. These patterns have been experimentally characterized in terms of how their size…
Formation and rupture of vesicles is a fundamental process underlying diverse phenomena in biology, materials science, and biomedical applications. Vesicles form when the area of a growing disk-like membrane exceeds a critical value at…
We investigate pores in fluid membranes by molecular dynamics simulations of an amphiphile-solvent mixture, using a molecular coarse-grained model. The amphiphilic membranes self-assemble into a lamellar stack of amphiphilic bilayers…
Lyotropic cholesteric liquid crystal phases are ubiquitously observed in biological and synthetic polymer solutions, characterized by a complex interplay between thermal fluctuations, entropic and enthalpic forces. The elucidation of the…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Bolaamphiphilesamphiphilic molecules with polar groups at each of the two ends of a hydrophobic tail with pH-sensitive spontaneous molecular curvaturesendow membranes of extremophiles with an exquisite balance between stability (or…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations on fluid membranes with orientational order and multiple edges in the presence and absence of external forces. The membrane resists bending and has an edge tension, the orientational order couples with…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
A fundamental question in biology is to understand how patterns and shapes emerge from the collective interplay of large numbers of cells. Cells forming two-dimensional epithelial tissues behave as active materials that undergo remodeling…