Related papers: Phase Separation on Deformable Membranes: interpla…
Phase-separated biomolecular condensates with liquid-like properties play a key role in the organization and compartmentalization of the intracellular environment. Condensate-mediated capillary forces acting on membranes drive…
Phase separation plays an role in determining the self-assembly of biological and soft-matter systems. In biological systems, liquid-liquid phase separation inside a cell leads to the formation of various macromolecular aggregates. The…
Biomolecular condensates constitute a newly recognized form of spatial organization in living cells. Although many condensates are believed to form as a result of phase separation, the physicochemical properties that determine the phase…
Control over the physical properties of materials is ubiquitously required in many fields. One means by which this can be achieved is controlling the internal structure of multi-component materials with an eye to enhancing mechanical…
Liposomes that achieve a heterogeneous and spatially organized surface through phase separation have been recognized to be a promising platform for delivery purposes. However, their design and optimization through experimentation can be…
Understanding protein folding has been one of the great challenges in biochemistry and molecular biophysics. Over the past 50 years, many thermodynamic and kinetic studies have been performed addressing the stability of globular proteins.…
Cell polarity and movement are fundamental to many biological functions. Experimental and theoretically studies have indicated that interactions of certain proteins lead to the cell polarization which plays a key role in controlling the…
In experiments on model membranes, a formation of large domains of different lipid composition is readily observed. However, no such phase separation is observed in the membranes of intact cells. Instead, a structure of small transient…
We perform simulations of a system containing simple model proteins and a polymer representing chromatin. We study the interplay between protein-protein and protein-chromatin interactions, and the resulting condensates which arise due to…
Rhythmic and sequential segmentation of the embryonic body plan is a vital developmental patterning process in all vertebrate species. However, a theoretical framework capturing the emergence of dynamic patterns of gene expression from the…
The spatio-temporal organization of proteins and the associated morphological changes in membranes are of importance in cell signaling. Several mechanisms that promote the aggregation of proteins at low cell surface concentrations have been…
We study the phase separation of binary lipid mixtures that form bicontinuous cubic phases. The competition between non-uniform Gaussian membrane curvature and line tension leads to a very rich phase diagram, where we observe symmetry…
Phase segregation, the process by which the components of a binary mixture spontaneously separate, is a key process in the evolution and design of many chemical, mechanical, and biological systems. In this work, we present a data-driven…
Understanding the (de)mixing behavior of multicomponent lipid bilayers is an important step towards unraveling the nature of spatial composition heterogeneities in cellular membranes and their role in biological function. We use…
Modeling membrane interactions with arbitrarily shaped colloidal particles, such as environmental micro- and nanoplastics, at the cell scale remains particularly challenging, owing to the complexity of particle geometries and the need to…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is important across biology, physics, and materials science. Although usually studied at equilibrium, active components - such as motor proteins, enzymes, and synthetic microswimmers - are increasingly…
The eukaryotic cell membrane is connected to a dense actin rich cortex. We present FCS and STED experiments showing that dense membrane bound actin networks have severe influence on lipid phase separation. A minimal actin cortex was bound…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
The interactions of a protein, its phase behavior, and ultimately, its ability to function, are all influenced by the interactions between the protein and its hydration waters. Here we study proteins with a variety of sizes, shapes,…
The interactions between diffusing molecules and membrane-bound receptors drive numerous cellular processes. In this work, we develop a spatial model of molecular interactions with membrane receptors by homogenizing the cell membrane and…