Tubulohelical membrane arrays: From initial observation to the elucidation...

Lipids undergo self-assembly to form ordered nonlamellar, nanoperiodic arrays both in vitro and in vivo. As a starting point for functional studies of these structures we found a connection between tubulohelical membrane arrays and primary cilia.

Bistability in the actin cortex

Multi-color fluorescence imaging experiments of wave forming Dictyostelium cells have revealed that actin waves separate two domains of the cell cortex that differ in their actin structure and phosphoinositide composition. We propose a bistable model of actin dynamics to account for these experimental observation.

Monte Carlo Simulations indicate that Chromatin Nanostructure is accessible by Light Microscopy

In this work we determine the radial pair distribution function of chromatin described by our E2A model and find that the dominant peaks which characterize the chromatin structure are very robust in several ways: They can still be identified in the case of chromatin fibers with reasonable linker histone and nucleosome defect rates as well as in the 2D case after a projection like in most high-res light microscopy experiments.

Combined molecular mechanics and continuum solvent studies of the pre-pore trimer of Cry4Aa toxin

Cry4Aa toxin is one of the mosquito-larvicidal proteins produced by Bacillus thuringiensis, and is thought to form lethal trimeric pores in the larval gut membrane. A full-atomic pre-pore structure of the Cry4Aa trimer reveals that Cry4Aa toxin uses the amino acid residues on alpha-helices 3, 4 and 6 to form trimer.