Related papers: Lipid membrane domains control actin network visco…
Multivalent interactions between deformable mesoscopic units are ubiquitous in biology, where membrane macromolecules mediate the interactions between neighbouring living cells and between cells and solid substrates. Lately, analogous…
The proper functions of tissues depend on the ability of cells to withstand stress and maintain shape. Central to this process is the cytoskeleton, comprised of three polymeric networks: F-actin, microtubules, and intermediate filaments.…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
The synthetic actin network demands great interest as bio-material due to its soft and wet nature that mimic many biological scaffolding structures. The study of these structures can contribute to a better understanding of this new…
Biomolecular condensates are formed via liquid-liquid phase separation of proteins, often together with nucleic acids, typically driven by interactions between low-affinity binding sites. The computational study of such condensates that…
Proteins in photosynthetic membranes can organize into patterned arrays that span the membrane's lateral size. Attractions between proteins in different layers of a membrane stack can play a key role in this ordering, as was suggested by…
A motile cell, when stimulated, shows a dramatic increase in the activity of its membrane, manifested by the appearance of dynamic membrane structures such as lamellipodia, filopodia and membrane ruffles. The external stimulus turns on…
One of the major challenges of bottom-up synthetic biology is rebuilding a minimal division machinery. The animal cell division apparatus is mechanically the simplest, in which an actin-based ring constricts the membrane, as compared to…
Adsorption of proteins onto membranes can alter the local membrane curvature. This phenomenon has been observed in biological processes such as endocytosis, tubulation and vesiculation. However, it is not clear how the local surface…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
Cationic lipid membranes are known to form compact complexes with DNA and to be effective as gene delivery agents both in vitro and in vivo. Here we employ molecular dynamics simulations for a detailed atomistic study of lipid bilayers…
Deformation due to embedded fluidic networks is currently studied in the context of soft-actuators and soft-robotics. Expanding on this concept, beams can be designed so that the pressure in the channel-network is created directly from…
We study the indentation of a free-standing lipid membrane suspended over a nanopore on a hydrophobic substrate by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We find that in the course of indentation, the membrane bends at the point of…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
The lateral diffusion of lipids within membrane is of paramount importance, serving as a central mechanism in numerous physiological processes including cell signaling, membrane trafficking, protein activity regulation, and energy…
Actomyosin networks are major structural components of the cell. They provide mechanical integrity and allow dynamic remodeling of eukaryotic cells, self-organizing into the diverse patterns essential for development. We provide a…
Membrane organization is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is to understand the lateral heterogeneous structures in membranes and membrane fluidity in the presence of…
In order to precisely quantify the fundamental interactions between heterogeneous lipid membranes with coexisting liquid-ordered (Lo) and liquid-disordered (Ld) domains, we performed detailed osmotic stress SAXS experiments by exploiting…
We present a simple coarse-grained bead-and-spring model for lipid bilayers. The system has been developed to reproduce the main (gel-liquid) transition of biological membranes on intermediate length scales of a couple of nanometres and is…
The Dynamic Template model of biological cell membranes and the cytoplasm as spatially organised fluid layers is extended to plant cells, and is shown to offer a feasible shear driven mechanism for the co-alignment of internal and external…