Related papers: Rupture of multiple parallel molecular bonds under…
Tight-binding (TB) molecular dynamics (MD) has emerged as a powerful method for investigating the atomic-scale structure of materials --- in particular the interplay between structural and electronic properties --- bridging the gap between…
Many suspensions contain particles with complex shapes that are affected not only by hydrodynamics, but also by thermal fluctuations, internal kinematic constraints and other long-range non-hydrodynamic interactions. Modeling these systems…
Targeted drug delivery relies on two physical processes: the selective binding of a therapeutic particle to receptors on a specific cell membrane, followed by transport of the particle across the membrane. In this article, we address some…
Many biological processes are supported by special molecules, called motor proteins or molecular motors, that transport cellular cargoes along linear protein filaments and can reversibly associate to their tracks. Stimulated by these…
The adhesion of cell membranes is mediated by the binding of membrane-anchored receptor and ligand proteins. In this article, we review recent results from simulations and theory that lead to novel insights on how the binding equilibrium…
Adhesive attachment systems consisting of multiple tapes or strands are commonly found in nature, for example in spider web anchorages or in mussel byssal threads, and their structure has been found to be ingeniously architected in order to…
Understanding the binding dynamics of liquid molecules is of fundamental importance in physical and life sciences. However, nanoscale fast dynamics pose great challenges for experimental characterization. Conventionally, the binding…
Much work has studied effective interactions between micron-sized particles carrying linkers forming reversible, inter-particle linkages. These studies allowed understanding the equilibrium properties of colloids interacting through…
We investigate the fracture of heterogeneous materials occurring under unloading from an initial load. Based on a fiber bundle model of time dependent fracture, we show that depending on the unloading rate the system has two phases: for…
The 'l-Doubling' phenomenon emanates from the coupling between molecular rotations and perpendicular vibrations (bending modes) in polyatomic molecules. This elusive phenomenon has been largely discarded in laser-induced molecular…
We use molecular dynamics to study the vibrations of a thermally fluctuating two-dimensional elastic membrane clamped at both ends. We directly extract the eigenmodes from resonant peaks in the frequency domain of the time-dependent height…
Macromolecular crowding affects biophysical processes as diverse as diffusion, gene expression, cell growth, and senescence. Yet, there is no comprehensive understanding of how crowding affects reactions, particularly multivalent binding.…
The possible paralelism existing between phase transitions and fracture in disordered materials, is discussed using the well-known Fiber Bundle Models and a probabilistic approach suited to smooth fluctuations near the critical point. Two…
We have designed a new experimental setup able to investigate fracture of soft materials at small scales. At high crack velocity, where energy is mostly dissipated through viscoelastic processes, we observe an increasingly large high strain…
The folding of a polypeptide is an example of the cooperative effects of the amino-acid residues. Of recent interest is how a secondary structure, such as a helix, spontaneously forms during the collapse of a peptide from an initial…
Molecular simulations provide a powerful means to unravel the complex relationships between network architecture and the mechanical response of polymer networks, with a particular emphasis on rupture and fracture phenomena. Although…
We study the effects of the shear force on the rupture mechanism on a double stranded DNA. Motivated by recent experiments, we perform the atomistic simulations with explicit solvent to obtain the distributions of extension in hydrogen and…
A model of protein-ligand binding kinetics in which slow solvent dynamics results from hydrophobic drying transitions is investigated. Molecular dynamics simulations show that solvent in the receptor pocket can fluctuate between wet and dry…
Bond rupture mechanism enables to explain in block asymmetry of elaxation, force-velocity curve and the path of energy dissipation in muscle
Constitutive equations are derived for the viscoelastic response of rubbery polymers at finite strains. A polymer is thought of as a network of long chains connected to temporary junctions. At a random time, a chain detaches from a…