Related papers: Molecular sorting on a fluctuating membrane
Non-motile elongated bacteria confined in two-dimensional open micro-channels can exhibit collective motion and form dense monolayers with nematic order if the cells proliferate, i.e., grow and divide. Using soft molecular dynamics…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
We analyze the transverse intersubstrate pseudo-Casimir force, arising as a result of thermal fluctuations of the liquid crystalline layers of a smectic-A film confined between two planar substrates in a bookshelf geometry, in which the…
Lipid membranes are abundant in living organisms, where they constitute a surrounding shell for cells and their organelles. There are many circumstances in which the deformations of lipid membranes are involved in living cells: fusion and…
Biomembranes, which are mainly composed of neutral and charged lipids, exhibit a large variety of functional structures and dynamics. Here, we report a coarse-grained molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the phase separation and…
The concept of fluctuation-induced effective interactions is extended to systems driven out of equilibrium. We compute the forces experienced by macroscopic objects immersed in a soft material driven by external shaking sources. We show…
Liquid crystal mesophases of achiral molecules are normally achiral, yet in a few materials they spontaneously segregate and form right- and left-handed chiral domains. One mechanism that drives chiral segregation is molecular shape…
How condensed-matter simulations depend on the number of molecules being simulated ($N$) is sometimes itself a valuable piece of information. Liquid crystals provide a case in point. Light scattering and $2d$-IR experiments on…
Hydrophobic force, interfacial tension, transverse density profile in confined water system are addressed from first principles of statistical mechanics in a lattice model for water. Using molecular mean field theory technique we deduce…
We propose a mechanism for the stabilization/destabilization of cell membranes by multivalent ions with an emphasis on its implications for the division and fusion of cells. We find that multivalent cations preferentially adsorbed onto a…
The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…
Complex colloidal cluster morphologies are desirable for the fabrication of advanced materials, such as photonic crystals and meta-materials, and can be formed through evaporation-driven packing. By coupling lattice Boltzmann and discrete…
The ability to control the crystallization behaviour (including its absence) of particles, be they biomolecules such as globular proteins, inorganic colloids, nanoparticles, or metal atoms in an alloy, is of both fundamental and…
The understanding of dynamics and functioning of biological membranes and in particular of membrane embedded proteins is one of the most fundamental problems and challenges in modern biology and biophysics. In particular the impact of…
We investigate the behavior of colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine in the presence of a chemically patterned substrate. Close to the critical point of the mixture, the particles are subjected to…
Suitable asymmetric microstructures can be used to control the direction of motion in microorganism populations. This rectification process makes it possible to accumulate swimmers in a region of space or to sort different swimmers. Here we…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
Biological mixtures such as the cytosol may consist of thousands of distinct components. There is now a substantial body of evidence showing that, under physiological conditions, intracellular mixtures can phase separate into spatially…
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…