相关论文: Controlling crystallization and its absence: Prote…

Protein crystallization in vivo provides some fascinating examples of biological self-assembly. Here, we provide a selective survey to show the diversity of functions for which protein crystals are used, and the physical properties of the…

Crystallization of proteins, specifically proteins of medical relevance, is performed for various reasons such as to understand the protein structure and to design therapies. Obtaining kinetic constants in rate laws for nucleation and…

Colloids play an important role in fundamental science as well as in nature and technology. They have had a strong impact on the fundamental understanding of statistical physics. For example, colloids have helped to obtain a better…

X-ray crystallography is the predominant method for obtaining atomic-scale information about biological macromolecules. Despite the success of the technique, obtaining well diffracting crystals still critically limits going from protein to…

Crystallization is a key step in macromolecular structure determination by crystallography. While a robust theoretical treatment of the process is available, due to the complexity of the system, the experimental process is still largely one…

Clusters of colloidal particles, often termed supraparticles, can provide more functionality than the individual particles they consist of. Since these functionalities are determined by the arrangement of the primary particles within a…

We use computer simulation to study crystal-forming model proteins equipped with interactions that are both orientationally specific and nonspecific. Distinct dynamical pathways of crystal formation can be selected by tuning the strengths…

There are large number of proteins, the existence of which are known but not their crystal structure, because of difficulty in finding the exact condition for their crystallization. Heterogeneous nucleation on disordered porous substrates…

Crystallography may be the gold standard of protein structure determination, but obtaining the necessary high-quality crystals is also in some ways akin to prospecting for the precious metal. The tools and models developed in soft matter…

Crystals are a state of matter characterised by periodic order. Yet crystalline materials can harbour disorder in many guises, such as non-repeating variations in composition, atom displacements, bonding arrangements, molecular…

Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…

The kinetic mechanisms underlying bottom-up assembly of colloidal particles have been widely investigated in efforts to control crystallization pathways and to direct growth into targeted superstructures for applications including photonic…

Advances in experimental techniques and in theoretical models have improved our understanding of protein crystallization. But they have also left open questions regarding the protein phase behavior and self-assembly kinetics, such as why…

Over recent years, molecular simulations have provided invaluable insights into the microscopic processes governing the initial stages of crystal nucleation and growth. A key aspect that has been observed in many different systems is the…

Biomolecular condensates play a crucial role in the spatial organization of living matter. These membrane-less organelles, resulting from liquid-liquid phase separation, operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium, with their size and…

Molecules provide the ultimate language in terms of which physiology and pathology must be understood. Myriads of proteins participate in elaborate networks of interactions and perform chemical activities coordinating the life of cells. To…

Natural protein molecules are exceptional polymers. Encoded in apparently random strings of amino-acids, these objects perform clear physical tasks that are rare to find by simple chance. Accurate folding, specific binding, powerful…

Colloidal model systems allow studying crystallization kinetics under fairly ideal conditions with rather well characterized pair interactions and minimized external influences. In complementary approaches therefore experiment, analytic…

Collective behavior of proteins on biomembranes is usually studied within the spontaneous curvature model. Here we consider an alternative phenomenological approach, which accounts consistently for partial ordering of proteins as well as…

Proteins control many vital functions in living cells, such as cell growth and cell division. Reliable coordination of these functions requires the spatial and temporal organizaton of proteins inside cells, which encodes information about…