相关论文: Ion channels in critical membranes: clustering, co…
While modern structural biology has provided us with a rich and diverse picture of membrane proteins, the biological function of membrane proteins is often influenced by the mechanical properties of the surrounding lipid bilayer. Here we…
A physical scenario accounting for the existence of size-limited submicrometric domains in cell membranes is proposed. It is based on the numerical investigation of the counterpart, in lipidic membranes where proteins are diffusing, of the…
Biological membranes are elastic media in which the presence of a transmembrane protein leads to local bilayer deformation. The energetics of deformation allow two membrane proteins in close proximity to influence each other's equilibrium…
Rafts, or functional domains, are transient nano- or mesoscopic structures in the plasma membrane and are thought to be essential for many cellular processes such as signal transduction, adhesion, trafficking and lipid/protein sorting.…
In this paper, we examine the mechanical role of the lipid bilayer in ion channel conformation and function with specific reference to the case of the mechanosensitive channel of large conductance (MscL). In a recent paper (Wiggins and…
Intracellular Ca signals represent a universal mechanism of cell function. Messages carried by Ca are local, rapid, and powerful enough to be delivered over the thermal noise. A higher signal to noise ratio is achieved by a cooperative…
Recent experiments have demonstrated that the timescale of adaptation of single neurons and ion channel populations to stimuli slows down as the length of stimulation increases; in fact, no upper bound on temporal time-scales seems to exist…
The investigation of collective behaviour in dense assemblies of self-propelled active particles has been motivated by a wide range of biological phenomena. Of particular interest are dynamical transitions of cellular and sub-cellular…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
A common feature of biological self-organization is how active agents communicate with each other or their environment via chemical signaling. Such communications, mediated by self-generated chemical gradients, have consequences for both…
We present an unsupervised, local activation-dependent learning rule for intrinsic plasticity (IP) which affects the composition of ion channel conductances for single neurons in a use-dependent way. We use a single-compartment…
Biological membranes are known to form various structural motifs, from lipid bilayers to tubular filaments and networks facilitating e.g. adhesion and cell-cell communication. To understand the biophysical processes underpinning lipid-lipid…
In most studies of the channel capacity of quantum channels, it is assumed that the errors in each use of the channel are independent. However, recent work has begun to investigate the effects of memory or correlations in the error. This…
It is well known that at the gel-liquid phase transition temperature a lipid bilayer membrane exhibits an increased ion permeability. We analyze the quantized currents in which the increased permeability presents itself. The open time…
Cytoskeletal motors known as motor proteins are molecules that drive cellular transport along several parallel cytoskeletal filaments and support many biological processes. Experimental evidences suggest that they interact with the nearest…
Receptor-ligand binding is a critical first step in signal transduction and the duration of the interaction can impact signal generation. In mammalian cells, clustering of receptors may be facilitated by heterogeneous zones of lipids, known…
A model of lipid bilayers made of a mixture of two lipids with different average compositions on both leaflets, is developed. A Landau hamiltonian describing the lipid-lipid interactions on each leaflet, with two lipidic fields $\psi_1$ and…
A model of mobile, charged ion channels in a fluid membrane is studied. The channels may switch between an open and a closed state according to a simple two-state kinetics with constant rates. The effective electrophoretic charge and the…
After discussing the relevance of statistical physics in molecular recognition processes, we present a schematic model for ligand-receptor association based on an Ising chain. We discuss the possible behaviors of the affinity when the…
Biologically important membrane channels are gated by force at attached tethers. Here, we generically characterize the non-trivial interplay of force, membrane tension, and channel deformations that can affect gating. A central finding is…