Biophysics of membrane curvature remodeling at molecular and mesoscopic lengthscales

Membrane biophysics

In physics, we usually want to reduce the behavior of the system to fit it to a formula. In biology, however, all the details of the system are important; their organization makes for life. Thus the organization of proteins in the plasma membrane is critical for various biological processes that occur on membranes. My purpose here is to introduce readers first to the opportunities for learning ...

Teaching molecular biophysics at the graduate level.

Membrane curvature at a glance.

Membrane curvature is an important parameter in defining the morphology of cells, organelles and local membrane subdomains. Transport intermediates have simpler shapes, being either spheres or tubules. The generation and maintenance of curvature is of central importance for maintaining trafficking and cellular functions. It is possible that local shapes in complex membranes could help to define...

Molecular Biophysics

This book is a collection of review papers presented at a meeting held at Squaw Valley, California in the summer of 1964. Most of them are concerned with methods of chemical physics as applied to biological problems. The exception is an excellent article on molecular genetics by F. Gros, entitled "The Cell Machinery." It does not include, however, the recent work on the genetic code by Khorana....

Curvature-Driven Molecular Flow on Membrane Surface

This work presents a mathematical model for the localization of multiple species of diffusion molecules on membrane surfaces. Morphological change of bilayer membrane in vivo is generally modulated by proteins. Most of these modulations are associated with the localization of related proteins in the crowded lipid environments. We start with the energetic description of the distributions of mole...