相关论文: Mechanobiology predicts raft formations triggered …
In a cellular medium, the plasmic membrane is a place of interactions between the cell and its direct external environment. A classic model describes it as a fluid mosaic. The fluid phase of the membrane allows a lateral degree of freedom…
Whether live cell membranes show miscibility phase transitions (MPTs), and if so, how they fluctuate near the transitions remain outstanding unresolved issues in physics and biology alike. Motivated by these questions we construct a generic…
The organization of lipids in biological membranes is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is how to control lateral lipid composition in supported membranes which are…
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…
Cells use homeostatic mechanisms to maintain an optimal composition of distinct types of phospholipids in cellular membranes. The hydrophilic dipolar layer at the membrane interface, composed of phospholipid headgroups, regulates the…
The actin cortex of an animal cell is a thin polymeric layer attached to the inner side of the plasma membrane. It plays a key role in shape regulation and pattern formation on the cellular and tissue scale and, in particular, generates the…
We present the multicomponent functionalized free energies that characterize the low-energy packings of amphiphilic molecules within a membrane through a correspondence to connecting orbits within a reduced dynamical system. To each…
Biological information processing often arises from mesoscopic molecular systems operating far from equilibrium, yet their complexity can make the underlying principles difficult to visualize. In this study, we introduce a macroscopic…
Transitions between solid-like and fluid-like states in living tissues have been found in steps of embryonic development and in stages of disease progression. Our current understanding of these transitions has been guided by experimental…
Nucleic acids such as mRNA have emerged as a promising therapeutic modality with the capability of addressing a wide range of diseases. Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) as a delivery platform for nucleic acids were used in the COVID-19 vaccines…
The mammalian cell membrane is embedded with biomolecular condensates of protein and lipid clusters, which interact with an underlying viscoelastic cytoskeleton network to organize the cell surface and mechanically interact with the…
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) govern diverse physiological processes and are central to modern pharmacology. Yet discovering GPCR modulators remains challenging because receptor activation often arises from complex allosteric effects…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…
Lipid bilayers forming biological membranes are known to behave as viscous 2D fluids on submicrometer scales; usually they contain a large number of active protein inclusions. Recently, it has been shown [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 112,…
Cells self-organize into functional, ordered structures during tissue morphogenesis, a process that is evocative of colloidal self-assembly into engineered soft materials. Understanding how inter-cellular mechanical interactions may drive…
The recent discovery of a lateral organization in cell membranes due to small structures called 'rafts' has motivated a lot of biological and physico-chemical studies. A new experiment on a model system has shown a spectacular budding…
Mechanical stress plays an intricate role in gene expression in individual cells and sculpting of developing tissues. However, systematic methods of studying how mechanical stress and feedback help to harmonize cellular activities within a…
The initiation of directional cell motion requires symmetry breaking that can happen both with or without external stimuli. During cell crawling, forces generated by the cytoskeleton and their transmission through mechanosensitive adhesions…
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…
To ensure faithful information transmission, cells utilize nonequilibrium drives to reduce errors. Kinetic proofreading is a classic mechanism known to sharpen ligand discrimination by T lymphocytes. It remains an open question whether the…