Related papers: Helices in Biomolecules
Achieving and exceeding the diversity of colloidal analogs of chemical elements and molecules as building blocks of matter has been the central goal and challenge of colloidal science ever since Einstein introduced the colloidal atom…
Biological membranes are shaped by various proteins that either generate inward or outward membrane curvature. In this article, we investigate the membrane morphologies induced by mixtures of arc-shaped particles with coarse-grained…
Helicases, involved in a number of cellular functions, are motors that translocate along singlestranded nucleic acid and couple the motion to unwinding double-strands of a duplex nucleic acid. The junction between double and single strands…
Network glasses are the physical prototype for many self-organized systems, ranging from proteins to computer science. Conventional theories of gases, liquids, and crystals do not account for the strongly material-selective character of the…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
Vesicles self-assembled from amphiphilic diblock copolymers exhibit a wide diversity of behavior upon electroporation, due to competitions between edge, surface and bending energies that drive the system, while different viscous dissipation…
A new type of a levitating droplet clusters composed of often transforming small aggregates of water droplets is described for the first time. Unlike earlier observed droplet clusters controlled by aerodynamic forces, which formed either an…
Nucleic acids are highly deformable helical molecules constantly stretched, twisted and bent in their biological functioning. Single molecule experiments have shown that double stranded (ds)-RNA and standard ds-DNA have opposite…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism, these systems…
The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…
Proteins are the common constituents of all living cells. They are molecular machines that interact with each other as well as with other cell products and carry out a dizzying array of functions with distinction. These interactions follow…
Recent progress has been made in the understanding of the physical properties of chromatin -- the dense complex of DNA and histone proteins that occupies the nuclei of plant and animal cells. Here I will focus on the two lowest levels of…
We draw attention on a particular configuration of supersymmetric particle masses, motivated by naturalness and flavour considerations. All its relevant phenomenological properties for the LHC are described in terms of a few physical…
Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the…
We present a model, based on symmetry and geometry, for proteins. Using elementary ideas from mathematics and physics, we derive the geometries of discrete helices and sheets. We postulate a compatible solvent-mediated emergent pairwise…
Hard helices can be regarded as a paradigmatic elementary model for a number of natural and synthetic soft matter systems, all featuring the helix as their basic structural unit: from natural polynucleotides and polypeptides to synthetic…
Liquid mixtures of many interacting components often exhibit numerous coexisting types of droplets. An exciting example is the cytosol of biological cells, where diverse droplets, called condensates, are essential for cellular function.…
Molecular gas plays an important role in the structure of planetary nebulae: it is a major component of the equatorial tori of bipolar nebulae, it forms the cores of globules and related mircostructures, and is the likely origin of multiple…
Amphiphiles are molecules which have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts. In water- and/or oil-like solvent, they self-assemble into extended sheet-like structures due to the hydrophobic effect. The free energy of an amphiphilic system…