Related papers: Mixing small proteins with lipids and cholesterol
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
Differential microcalorimetric measurements have been performed in aqueous dispersions of dimyristoylphosphatidylcholine (DMPC) multilamellar vesicles in a wide range of temperatures covering the whole transition between the lamellar gel…
The phase-separation occurring in a system of mutually interacting proteins that can bind on specific sites of a chromatin fiber is here investigated. This is achieved by means of extensive Molecular Dynamics simulations of a simple polymer…
Experiments on supported lipid bilayers featuring liquid ordered/disordered domains have shown that the spatial arrangement of the lipid domains and their chemical composition are strongly affected by the curvature of the substrate.…
We construct a coarse-grained (CG) model for dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC)/cholesterol bilayers and apply it to large-scale simulation studies of lipid membranes. Our CG model is a two-dimensional representation of the membrane,…
We study membrane-protein interactions and membrane-mediated protein-protein interactions by Monte Carlo simulations of a generic coarse-grained model for lipid bilayers with cylindrical hydrophobic inclusions. The strength of the…
We introduce a simple and predictive model for determining the phase stability of ternary phospholipid-cholesterol mixtures. Assuming that competition between the liquid and gel order of the phospholipids is the main driving force behind…
Biological membranes are complex, dynamic structures essential for cellular compartmentalization, signaling, and mechanical integrity. The molecular organization of eukaryotic membranes has been extensively studied, including the lipid…
At the neuromuscular junction (NMJ), the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) self-associates to give rise to rapid muscle movement. While lipid domains have maintained nAChR aggregates in-vitro, their specific roles in nAChR clustering…
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…
Sterols have been ascribed a major role in the organization of biological membranes, in particular for the formation of liquid ordered domains in complex lipid mixtures. Here, we employed molecular dynamics simulations to compare the…
Colloidal droplets are used in a variety of practical applications. Some of these applications require particles of different sizes. These include medical diagnostic methods, the creation of photonic crystals, the formation of…
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…
Relatively short peptides, such as toxins and antimicrobial-peptides, are known to insert themselves into cell membranes. On the basis of simple bead-spring models for the membrane lipids, the peptide, and water, detailed processes of the…
Colloidal mixtures represent a versatile model system to study transport in complex environments. They allow for a systematic variation of the control parameters, namely size ratio, total volume fraction and composition. We study the…
Unravelling the physical mechanisms behind the organisation of lipid domains is a central goal in cell biology and membrane biophysics. Previous studies on cells and model lipid bilayers featuring phase-separated domains found an intricate…
The aqueous solvent profoundly influences protein folding, yet its effects are relatively poorly understood. In this study, we investigate the impact of solvation on the folding of lattice proteins by using Monte Carlo simulations. The…
It has recently been proposed that proteins embedded in lipidic bio-membranes can spontaneously self-organize into stable small clusters, or membrane nano-domains, due to the competition between short-range attractive and longer-range…
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 cell membranes, proteins and lipids are organized into sub-micrometric nanodomains of varying size, shape and composition, performing specific functions. Despite their biological importance, the detailed morphology of these nanodomains…