Related papers: Cluster phases of membrane proteins
We address the relationship between membrane microheterogeneity and anomalous subdiffusion in cell membranes by carrying out Monte Carlo simulations of two-component lipid membranes. We find that near-critical fluctuations in the membrane…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids diffuse in a highly crowded and heterogeneous landscape, where aggregates and dense domains of proteins or lipids obstruct the path of diffusing molecules. In general, hindered motion gives rise to…
Proteins and nucleic acids can spontaneously self-assemble into membraneless droplet-like compartments, both in vitro and in vivo. A key component of these droplets are multi-valent proteins that possess several adhesive domains with…
Cell plasma membranes display a dramatically rich structural complexity characterized by functional sub-wavelength domains with specific lipid and protein composition. Under favorable experimental conditions, patterned morphologies can also…
The formation of dynamical clusters of proteins is ubiquitous in cellular membranes and is in part regulated by the recycling of membrane components. Mean-field models of out-of-equilibrium cluster formation with recycling predict a broad…
Within the framework of a discrete Gaussian model, we present analytical results for the interaction induced by a lamellar phase between small embedded colloids. We consider the two limits of particles strongly adherent to the adjacent…
Cell adhesion proteins typically form stable clusters that anchor the cell membrane to its environment. Several works have suggested that cell membrane protein clusters can emerge from a local feedback between the membrane curvature and the…
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…
Central to understanding membrane bound cell signaling is to quantify how the membrane ultra-structure consisting of transient spatial domains modulates signaling and how the signaling influences this ultra-structure. Yet, measuring the…
Recent experiments by Y. Gambin et al. [PNAS 103, 2098 (2006)] have called into question the applicability of the Saffman-Delbruck diffusivity for proteins embedded in the lipid bilayers. We present a simple argument to account for this…
Membrane bending is an extensively studied problem from both modeling and experimental perspectives because of the wide implications of curvature generation in cell biology. Many of the curvature generating aspects in membranes can be…
We develop methods for investigating protein drift-diffusion dynamics in heterogeneous cell membranes and the roles played by geometry, diffusion, chemical kinetics, and phase separation. Our hybrid stochastic numerical methods combine…
In this paper we present a detailed analytical study of the phase diagram and of the structural properties of a field theoretic model with a short-range attraction and a competing long-range screened repulsion. We provide a full derivation…
We present a combined experimental and numerical study of the equilibrium cluster formation in globular protein solutions under no-added salt conditions. We show that a cluster phase emerges as a result of a competition between a long-range…
We consider processes that coincide with a given diffusion process except on the boundaries of a finite collection of domains. The behavior on each of the boundaries is asymmetric: the process is much more likely to enter the interior of…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
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…
The formation of microdomains, also called rafts, in biomembranes can be attributed to the surface tension of the membrane. In order to model this phenomenon, a model involving a coupling between the local composition and the local…
A major issue in biology is the understanding of the interactions between proteins. These interactions can be described by a network, where the proteins are modeled by nodes and the interactions by edges. The origin of these protein…
The aggregation or clustering of proteins and other macromolecules plays an important role in the formation of large-scale molecular assemblies within cell membranes. Examples include lipid rafts and postsynaptic domains (PSDs). PSDs are…