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A coarse-grained molecular model, which consists of a spherical particle and an orientation vector, is proposed to simulate lipid membrane on a large length scale. The solvent is implicitly represented by an effective attractive interaction…
We theoretically study the behavior of vesicles filled with a liquid of higher density than the surrounding medium, a technique frequently used in experiments. In the presence of gravity, these vesicles sink to the bottom of the container,…
Lipid bilayer membranes have a native (albeit small) permeability for water molecules. Under an external load, provided that the bilayer structure stays intact and does not suffer from poration or rupture, a lipid membrane deforms and its…
Asteroseismology is found to be a excellent tool for detecting diffusion-induced helium gradients inside main-sequence A stars. Models have been computed for 1.6 and 2.0 M$_{\odot}$ stars with pure helium diffusion, at different ages, so…
A mechanism for self propulsion of deformable vesicle has been proposed, vesicle moves by sensing the self-generated chemical gradient. Like many molecular motors they suffer strong perturbations from the environment in which they move as a…
Cellular membranes exhibit a large variety of shapes, strongly coupled to their function. Many biological processes involve dynamic reshaping of membranes, usually mediated by proteins. This interaction works both ways: while proteins…
Using the classical density functional theory of freezing and Monte Carlo computer simulations, we explore the liquid-crystalline phase behavior of hard rectangles on flat and cylindrical manifolds. Moreover, we study the effect of a static…
Optical tracking in vivo experiments reveal that diffusion of particles in biological cells is strongly enhanced in the presence of ATP and the experimental data for animal cells could previously be reproduced within a phenomenological…
Metastable vaterite crystals were synthesized by increasing the pH and consequently the saturation states of Ca and CO3 containing solutions using an ammonia diffusion method. SEM and TEM analyses indicate that vaterite grains produced by…
Inspired by epithelial morphogenesis, we consider a minimal model for the shaping of a surface driven by $p$-atic topological defects. We show that a positive (negative) defect can dynamically generate a (hyperbolic) cone whose shape…
We review how phase-field models contributed to the understanding of various aspects of crystal nucleation including homogeneous and heterogeneous processes, and their role in microstructure evolution. We recall results obtained both by the…
We develop a coarse-grained particle-based model to simulate membranes with nematic liquid-crystal order. The coarse-grained particles form vesicles which, at low temperature, have orientational order in the local tangent plane. As the…
Topological defects are ubiquitous on surfaces with orientational order fields. Here, we study equilibrium states generated by the feedback between geometry and nematic order on fluid membranes with an integer topological defect. When the…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is key to understanding aqueous two-phase systems (ATPS) arising throughout cell biology, medical science, and the pharmaceutical industry. Controlling the detailed morphology of phase-separating compound…
The morphologies of two-dimensional (2D) crystals, nucleated, grown, and integrated within 2D elastic fluids, for instance in giant vesicle membranes, are dictated by an interplay of mechanics, permeability, and thermal contraction.…
A phase-field model for dealing with dynamic instabilities in membranes is presented. We use it to study curvature-driven pearling instability in vesicles induced by the anchorage of amphiphilic polymers on the membrane. Within this model,…
Hydrogel diffusiophoresis is the deformation of a hydrogel due to a solute gradient that leads to a gradient of pairwise interactions between the solute particles and the hydrogel polymers to trigger osmotic flux. Unlike typical osmosis, it…
Multistep denaturation in a short circular DNA molecule is analyzed by a mesoscopic Hamiltonian model which accounts for the helicoidal geometry. Computation of melting profiles by the path integral method suggests that stacking…
The self-organization of proteins into enriched compartments and the formation of complex patterns are crucial processes for life on the cellular level. Liquid-liquid phase separation is one mechanism for forming such enriched compartments.…
Stress granules (SG) are droplets of proteins and RNA that form in the cell cytoplasm during stress conditions. We consider minimal models of stress granule formation based on the mechanism of phase separation regulated by ATP-driven…