Related papers: Cationic DMPC/DMTAP Lipid Bilayers: Molecular Dyna…
Acetaminophen (APAP) or Paracetamol, despite its wide and common use for pain and fever symptoms, shows a variety of side effects, toxic effects, and overdose effects. The most common form of toxic effects of APAP is in the liver where…
Lipid bilayers forming biological membranes are known to behave as viscous 2D fluids on submicrometer scales; usually they contain a large number of active protein inclusions. Recently, it has been shown [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112,…
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…
Mixtures of lipids and cholesterol are commonly used as model systems for studying the formation of liquid-ordered ($L_o$) domains in heterogeneous biological membranes. The simplest model system exhibiting coexistence between $L_o$ domains…
In spite of the great success that all-atom molecular dynamics simulations have seen in revealing the nature of the lipid bilayer, the interplay between a membrane's curvature and dynamics remains elusive. This is largely due to the…
Understanding interactions between membranes requires measurements on well-controlled systems close to natural conditions, in which fluctuations play an important role. We have determined, by grazing incidence X-ray scattering, the…
We investigated the phase separation of dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS) and dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) in giant unilamellar vesicles in hypotonic solution using fluorescence and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Although…
Many-body dissipative particle dynamics (MDPD) offers a significant speed-up in the simulation of various systems, including soft matter, in comparison with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations based on Lennard-Jones nteractions, which is…
The organization of lipids in biological membranes is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is how to control lateral lipid composition in supported membranes which are…
The rich thermotropic behavior of lipid bilayers is addressed using phenomenological theory informed by many experiments. The most recent experiment not yet addressed by theory has shown that the tilt modulus in DMPC lipid bilayers…
A mesoscopic coarse-grain model for computationally-efficient simulations of biomembranes is presented. It combines molecular dynamics simulations for the lipids, modeled as elastic chains of beads, with multiparticle collision dynamics for…
We report a new and facile method for measuring edge tensions of lipid membranes. The approach is based on electroporation of giant unilamellar vesicles and analysis of the pore closure dynamics. We applied this method to evaluate the edge…
In this paper we present the results of a large-scale numerical investigation of structural properties of a model of cell membrane, simulated as a bilayer of flexible molecules in vacuum. The study was performed by carrying out extensive…
Dynamin is a ubiquitous GTPase that tubulates lipid bilayers and is implicated in many membrane severing processes in eukaryotic cells. Setting the grounds for a better understanding of this biological function, we develop a generalized…
Although 1-alkanols are widely used as anesthetics and membrane-active agents, the molecular basis of their chain-length-dependent cutoff behavior remains unclear. Here, we perform extensive atomistic molecular dynamics simulations to…
It was recently discovered that friction between surfaces bearing phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipid bilayers can be increased by two orders of magnitude or more via an externally-applied electric field, and that this increase is fully…
Caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine), an ingredient of coffee, is used worldwide as a psychostimulant, antioxidant, and adjuvant analgesic. To gain insights into the action mechanism of caffeine, we report on its effects on the phase…
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…
Cellular membranes are a heterogeneous mix of lipids, proteins and small molecules. Special groupings of saturated lipids and cholesterol form a liquid-ordered phase, known as `lipid rafts,' serving as platforms for signaling, trafficking…
Most organic and inorganic surfaces (e.g., glass, nucleic acids or lipid membranes) become charged in aqueous solutions. The resulting ionic distribution induces effective interactions between the charged surfaces. Stacks of like-charged…