Related papers: Controlling crystallization and its absence: Prote…
The dilute fluid phase of model globular proteins is studied. The model possesses a fluid-fluid transition buried within the fluid-crystal coexistence region, as do some globular proteins. If this fluid-fluid transition is not buried deep…
Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…
We argue for a convergence of crystallography, materials science and biology, that will come about through asking materials questions about biology and biological questions about materials, illuminated by considerations of information. The…
Cell polarization underlies many cellular processes, such as differentiation, migration, and budding. Many living cells, such as budding yeast and fission yeast, use cytoskeletal structures to actively transport proteins to one location on…
We present a kinetic model of crystal growth of polymers of finite molecular weight. Experiments help to classify polymer crystallization broadly into two kinetic regimes. One is observed in melts or in high molar mass polymer solutions and…
A reduced model, which can fold both helix and sheet structures, is proposed to study the problem of protein folding. The goal of this model is to find an unbiased effective potential that has included the effects of water and at the same…
Crystallography typically studies collections of point particles whose interaction forces are the gradient of a potential. Lifting this assumption generically gives rise in the continuum limit to a form of elasticity with additional moduli…
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…
Soft matter systems are common in nature and make up nearly all the essential components necessary for life, from cells to the organelles within those cells. The ability of these soft materials to deform is crucial for the proper…
Molecular spin clusters are mesoscopic systems whose structural and physical features can be tailored at the synthetic level. Besides, their quantum behavior is directly accessible in laboratory and their magnetic properties can be…
Self-propelled bacteria are marvels of nature with a potential to power dynamic materials and microsystems of the future. The challenge is in commanding their chaotic behavior. By dispersing swimming Bacillus subtilis in a…
The usefulness of glasses, and particularly of metallic glasses, in technological applications is often limited by their toughness, which is defined as the area under the stress vs. strain curve before plastic yielding. Recently toughness…
A simple extension of existing models for protein crystallisation is described, in which salt ions and charge neutrality are explicitly incorporated. This provides a straightforward explanation for the shape of protein crystallisation…
Time-dependent correlation functions of (unstable) particles undergoing biased or unbiased diffusion, coagulation and annihilation are calculated. This is achieved by similarity transformations between different stochastic models and…
Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…
Dating from experiments more than 20 years ago, it has been realized that the crystallization of hard colloidal particles in the vicinity of dynamical arrest has several anomalies, that render the conventional nucleation and growth model…
From a purely operational standpoint, the existence of microbes that can grow under extreme conditions, or "extremophiles", leads to the question of how the molecules making up these microbes can maintain both their structure and function.…
We examine the interactions between actively rotating proteins moving in a membrane. Experimental evidence suggests that such rotor proteins, like the ATP synthases of the inner mitochondrial membrane, can arrange themselves into lattices.…
Disorder in crystals is rarely random, and instead involves local correlations whose presence and nature are hidden from conventional crystallographic probes. This hidden order can sometimes be controlled, but its importance for physical…
Two-dimensional colloidal suspensions exposed to periodic external fields exhibit a variety of molecular crystalline phases. There two or more colloids assemble at lattice sites of potential minima to build new structural entities, referred…