相关论文: Transient Nanoscopic Phase Separation in Biologica…
Optical nanoantennas can efficiently confine light into nanoscopic hotspots, enabling single-molecule detection sensitivity at biological relevant conditions. This innovative approach to breach the diffraction limit offers a versatile…
The plasma membrane of living cells is compartmentalized at multiple spatial scales ranging from the nano- to the meso-scale. This non-random organization is crucial for a large number of cellular functions. At the nanoscale, cell membranes…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms…
Recently, the implementation of plasmonic nanoantennas has opened new possibilities to investigate the nanoscale dynamics of individual biomolecules in living cell. However, studies have yet been restricted to single molecular species as…
A novel two-leaflet description of lipid membranes is proposed. Within its framework, phase separation phenomena in multicomponent biological membranes are analyzed. As we show, interactions between the leaflets tend to suppress macroscopic…
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…
According to the lipid raft hypothesis, biological lipid membranes are laterally heterogeneous and filled with nanoscale ordered "raft" domains, which are believed to play an important role for the organization of proteins in membranes.…
We advanced a previously reported model for the \textit{in situ} scattering data analysis of coexisting lipid domains in free-floating multilamellar vesicles. Based on the scattering density profile of the individual domains we considered…
Membrane organization is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is to understand the lateral heterogeneous structures in membranes and membrane fluidity in the presence of…
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…
Ever since the raft model for biomembranes has been proposed, the traditional view of biomembranes based on the fluid-mosaic model has been altered. In the raft model, dynamical heterogeneities in multi-component lipid bilayers play an…
We discuss a realistic scenario, accounting for the existence of sub-micrometric protein domains in cell membranes. At the biological level, such membrane domains have been shown to be specialized, in order to perform a determined…
The spatiotemporal organisation of proteins and lipids on the cell surface has direct functional consequences for signaling, sorting and endocytosis. Earlier studies have shown that multiple types of membrane proteins including…
A biomimetic model of cell-cell communication was developed to probe the passive molecular transport across ion channels inserted in synthetic lipid bilayers formed between contacting droplets arranged in a linear array. Diffusion of a…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
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…
In cell membranes, proteins and lipids are organized into sub-micrometric nanodomains of varying size, shape and composition, performing specific functions. Despite their biological importance, the detailed morphology of these nanodomains…
Morphological transitions of phase separation associated with the asymmetry of lipid composition were investigated using micrometer-sized vesicles of lipid bilayers made from a lipid mixture. The complete macro-phase-separated morphology…
Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…