相关论文: Lipid exchange promotes fusion of model protocells

A recent study has demonstrated that phase separation in binary liquid mixtures is arrested in the presence of elastic networks and can lead to a nearly uniformly-sized distribution of the dilute-phase droplets. At longer timescales, these…

Most biological molecules contain acido-basic groups that modulate their structure and interactions. A consequence is that pH gradients, local heterogeneities and dynamic variations are used by cells and organisms to drive or regulate…

Cell neighbor exchanges play a critical role in regulating tissue fluidity during epithelial morphogenesis and repair. In vivo, these neighbor exchanges are often hindered by the formation of transiently stable four-fold vertices, which can…

Cell deformability is an essential determinant for tissue-scale mechanical nature, such as fluidity and rigidity, and is thus crucial for understanding tissue homeostasis and stable developmental processes. However, numerical simulations…

By means of lattice-based Monte Carlo simulations, we address properties of two-component lipid membranes on the experimentally relevant spatial scales of order of a micrometer and time intervals of order of a second, using DMPC/DSPC lipid…

Relatively short peptides, such as toxins and antimicrobial-peptides, are known to insert themselves into cell membranes. On the basis of simple bead-spring models for the membrane lipids, the peptide, and water, detailed processes of the…

The structure of membrane-active peptides and their interaction with lipid bilayers can be studied in oriented lipid membranes deposited on solid substrates. Such systems are desirable for a number of surface-sensitive techniques. Here we…

We introduce a microscopic model of a lipid with a charged headgroup and flexible hydrophobic tails, a neutral solvent, and counter ions. Short-ranged interactions between hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties are included as are the Coulomb…

The more we learn about the cytoplasm of cells, the more we realise that the cytoplasm is not uniform but instead is highly inhomogeneous. In any inhomogeneous solution, there are concentration gradients, and particles move either up or…

The hydration layer surrounding the phosphocholine headgroups of single-component phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipids, or of lipid-mixtures, assembled at an interface greatly modifies the interfacial properties and interactions. As water…

Anion exchange membranes are used in alkaline fuel cells and offer a promising alternative to the more expensive proton exchange membrane fuel cells. However, hydroxide ion conductivity in anion exchange membranes is low, and the quest for…

Liposomes that achieve a heterogeneous and spatially organized surface through phase separation have been recognized to be a promising platform for delivery purposes. However, their design and optimization through experimentation can be…

Soluble alpha-amylases play an important role in the catabolism of polysaccharides. In this work, we show that the enzyme can interact with the lipid membrane and further alter its mechanical properties. Vesicle fluctuation spectroscopy is…

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…

Despite the wide existence of vesicles in living cells as well as their important applications like drug-delivery, the underlying mechanism of vesicle fusion/fission remains under debate. Here, we develop a constrained self-consistent field…

Intercellular exchange networks are essential for the adaptive capabilities of populations of cells. While diffusional exchanges have traditionally been difficult to map, recent advances in nanotechnology enable precise probing of exchange…

Understanding the (de)mixing behavior of multicomponent lipid bilayers is an important step towards unraveling the nature of spatial composition heterogeneities in cellular membranes and their role in biological function. We use…

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…

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…

We theoretically explore fluidization of epithelial tissues by active T1 neighbor exchanges. We show that the geometry of cell-cell junctions encodes important information about the local features of the energy landscape, which we support…