Recent Insights on Biosystems

  • Morphological puzzles of the endoplasmic reticulum explained by effective membrane tension.

  • Leaflet tensions control the spatio-temporal remodeling of lipid bilayers and nanovesicles.

  • Remodeling of biomembranes and vesicles by condensate droplets, Theory and Experiment .

  • Engulfment and endocytosis of condensate droplets at the nanoscale.
  • Small His-tagged fluorophores are quenched by Ni-containing anchor lipids.
  • Membrane necks are crucial for budding and division of both nanovesicles and giant vesicles.
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  • Budding and fission of nanovesicles via membrane adsorption of small solutes.
  • Giant vesicles coupled to Min proteins undergo cyclic changes of spontaneous curvature.
  • Mechanical tension of biomembranes is accessible to super-resolution (STED) microscopy.
  • Division of cell-sized vesicles can be controlled by low densities of membrane-bound proteins.
  • Simple sugars shape giant vesicles into multispheres with many membrane necks.
  • Membrane necks experience curvature-induced constriction forces that can cleave the necks.
  • Collective force generation by molecular motors Is determined by strain-induced unbinding.

  • Shape transformations of nanovesicles reflect the individual tensions of their membrane leaflets.

  • Bilayer membranes with frequent flip flops have tensionless leaflets.

  • Molecular motors of the same polarity share their load almost equally.

  • Understanding and controlling the morphological complexity of biomembranes.

  • Membrane-bound gycosylphosphatidyl-inositol (GPI) anchors "flop down'' onto the membranes.
  • Nanodroplets at membranes create tight-lipped membrane necks via negative line tension.

  • Biomembranes exposed to asymmetric ionic conditions prefer high curvatures.

  • Lipids with bulky head groups generate large membrane curvatures by small compositional asymmetries.
  • Curvature elasticity and multi-sphere morphologies of giant vesicles.
  • Domes and cones: Adhesion-induced fission of membranes by ESCRT proteins.
  • Decomposition of time-dependent fluorescence signals reveals position-dependent kinetics of protein synthesis.
  • Budding of giant vesicles induced by photo-responsive azobenzene derivatives.
  • Cooperative binding of "marker of self" CD47 to macrophage receptor SIRPα.
  • Generation of bilayer asymmetry and spontaneous curvature by the glycolipid GM1.
  • Membrane nanotubes increase the robustness of giant vesicles.
  • Response of membranes and vesicles to capillary forces arising from liquid droplets.
  • Multiple in-buds are formed by the sequential adsorption of only two ESCRT proteins.
  • Sequential bottom-up assembly of mechanically stabilized synthetic cells by microfluidics.
  • Nanoparticles in contact with vesicles: energy landscapes and curvature-induced forces.
  • Tug-of-war between two elastically coupled molecular motors.
  • Stabilization of membrane necks by adhesive particles, substrate surfaces, and constriction forces.
  • Membrane curvature generated by asymmetric depletion layers.
  • Patterns of flexible nanotubes formed by liquid-ordered and liquid-disordered membranes.
  • Adhesive nanoparticles as local probes of membrane curvature.
  • Protein synthesis in E. coli: Dependence of codon-specific elongation on tRNA concentration and codon usage.
  • Critical particle sizes for the engulfment of nanoparticles by membranes and vesicles with bilayer asymmetry.
  • Spontaneous curvature of bilayer membranes from molecular simulations: Asymmetric lipid densities and asymmetric adsorption.