Related papers: Probing and modeling cell-cell communication in 2D…
We present Brownian dynamics simulations of the facilitated diffusion of a protein, modelled as a sphere with a binding site on its surface, along DNA, modelled as a semi-flexible polymer. We consider both the effect of DNA organisation in…
Contact inhibition plays a crucial role in the motility of cells, the process of wound healing, and the formation of tumors. By mimicking the mechanical motion of calls crawling on a substrate using a pseudopod, we constructed a minimal…
Intracellular transport of DNA carriers is a fundamental step of gene delivery. We present here a theoretical approach to study generically a single virus or DNA particle trafficking in a cell cytoplasm. Cellular trafficking has been…
We study a continuum model of the lipid bilayer based on minimizing the free energy of a mixture of water and lipid molecules. This paper extends previous work by Blom & Peletier (2004) in the following ways. (a) It formulates a more…
Fluid flow through layered materials with different wetting behavior is observed in a wide range of applications in biological, environmental and technical systems. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the occuring transport mechanisms…
Lipid rafts are heterogeneous dynamic lipid domains of the cell membranes that are involved in several biological processes, like protein and lipids specific transport and signaling. Our understanding of lipid raft formation is still…
Cell-cell contacts in tissues are continuously subject to mechanical forces due to homeostatic pressure and active cytoskeleton dynamics. While much is known about the molecular pathways of adhesion, the role of mechanics is less well…
Biological membranes constitute boundaries of cells and cell organelles. Physico-chemical mechanisms at the atomic scale are dictated by protein-lipid interaction strength, lipid composition, lipid distribution in the vicinity of the…
We use a coarse grained molecular model of supported lipid bilayers to study the formation of adhesion domains. We find that this process is a first order phase transition, triggered by a combination of pairwise short range attractive…
Intercellular signaling has an important role in organism development, but not all communication occurs using the same mechanism. Here, we analyze the energy efficiency of intercellular signaling by two canonical mechanisms: diffusion of…
Recent advances in electron microscopy have enabled the imaging of single cells in 3D at nanometer length scale resolutions. An uncharted frontier for in silico biology is the ability to simulate cellular processes using these observed…
DNA is now firmly established as a versatile and robust platform for achieving synthetic nanostructures. While the folding of single molecules into complex structures is routinely achieved through engineering basepair sequences, much less…
Lipid membranes have complex compositions and modeling the thermodynamic properties of multi-component lipid systems remains a remote goal. In this work we attempt to describe the thermodynamics of binary lipid mixtures by mapping…
Cell spreading is investigated at various scales in order to understand motility of living cells which is essential for a range of physiological activities in higher organisms as well as in microbes. At a microscopic scale, it has been seen…
In vivo, eukaryotic cells are embedded in a matrix environment, where they grow and develop. Generally, this extracellular matrix (ECM) is an anisotropic fibrous structure, through which macromolecules and biochemical signaling molecules at…
Biomolecular condensates form by phase separation of biological polymers and have important functions in the cell $-$ functions that are inherently connected to their physical properties. A remarkable aspect of such condensates is that…
Synaptic plasticity, the dynamic tuning of signal transmission strength between neurons, serves as a fundamental basis for memory and learning in biological organisms. This adaptive nature of synapses is considered one of the key features…
Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
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…