相关论文: Using holographic microscopy to measure the effect…
Living cells are characterized by the micrometric confinement of various macromolecules at high concentrations. Using droplets containing binary polymer blends as artificial cells, we previously showed that cell-sized confinement causes…
The role of macromolecular crowding in living systems is widely appreciated, but artificial crowders used to model these effects in vitro are often inadequately characterized. In this work, we examine density, viscosity, polymer…
The formation of (bio)molecular condensates via liquid-liquid phase separation in cells has received increasing attention, as these coacervates play important functional and regulatory roles within biological systems. However, the majority…
Diffusive transport of small molecules within the internal structures of biological and synthetic material systems is complex because the crowded environment presents chemical and physical barriers to mobility. We explored this mobility…
Biomolecular condensates are essential for cellular organization and result from phase separation in systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Among various models, chemically active droplets play a significant role, consisting of…
Diffusion is a fundamental phenomenon that occurs ubiquitously in nature and remains the subject of continuous research interest. Understanding diffusion is a key to understanding leaving systems. In this Chapter, I discuss diffusion of…
The study of interactions between biomimetic membranes and micron-sized particles is crucial for understanding various biological processes. Here, we control microparticle spontaneous engulfment by giant lipid vesicles by tuning particle…
The structure and function of polymers in confined environments, e.g., biopolymers in the cytoplasm of a cell, are strongly affected by macromolecular crowding. To explore the influence of solvent quality on conformations of crowded…
The cytoplasm of a living cell is crowded with several macromolecules of different shapes and sizes. Molecular diffusion in such a medium becomes anomalous due to the presence of macromolecules and diffusivity is expected to decrease with…
We report efforts to quantify the loading of cell-sized lipid vesicles using in-line digital holographic microscopy. This method does not require fluorescent reporters, fluorescent tracers, or radioactive tracers. A single-color LED light…
The diffusion of small molecular penetrants through polymeric materials represents an important fundamental problem, relevant to the design of materials for applications such as coatings and membranes. Polymer networks hold promise in these…
The experimental literature on the motion of mesoscopic probe particles through polymer solutions is systematically reviewed. The primary focus is the study of diffusive motion of small probe particles. Comparison is made with measurements…
We present a multiscale approach to model diffusion in a crowded environment and its effect on the reaction rates. Diffusion in biological systems is often modeled by a discrete space jump process in order to capture the inherent noise of…
We report circular dichroism measurements on the helix-coil transition of poly(L-glutamic acid) in solution with polyethylene glycol (PEG) as a crowding agent. Using small angle neutron scattering, PEG solutions have been characterized and…
We study the evaporation-induced stratification of a mixture of short and long polymer chains in a drying droplet using molecular simulations. We systematically investigate the effects of hydrodynamic interactions (HI) on this process by…
During the life cycle of bacterial cells the non-mixing of the two ring-shaped daughter genomes is an important prerequisite for the cell division process. Mimicking the environments inside highly crowded biological cells, we study the…
Dynamics of spreading of small droplets on surfaces has been studied by the molecular dynamics method. Simulations have been performed for mixtures of solvent and dimer, and solvent and tetramer droplets. For solvent particles and dimers,…
Lipid structures exhibit complex and highly dynamic lateral structure; and changes in lipid density and fluidity are believed to play an essential role in membrane targeting and function. The dynamic structure of liquids on the molecular…
Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) abound in cellular regulation. Their interactions are often transitory and highly sensitive to salt concentration and posttranslational modifications. However, little is known about the effect of…
Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations are used to simulate a layer of nanoparticles diffusing on the surface of a liquid. Both a low viscosity liquid, represented by Lennard-Jones monomers, and a high viscosity liquid, represented by…