Cholesterol has strong effects on the properties of phospholipid bilayers. For example, it induces ordering of the phospholipids’ alkyl tails. Felix’s new paper, featured on the BPS Blog, describes the spatial range of such effects.

Vesicles are small, spherical objects made of phospholipid bilayers. Yongtian’s paper, published in the Journal of Chemical Physics, describes how this geometry changes the thermodynamic behavior of the phospholipids.

Whether or not a mixture of multiple lipids forms a homogeneous bilayer is an important, and surprisingly difficult, problem in membrane biophysics. Shushan’s recent paper describes a new method that allows the accurate calculation of mixing phase-diagrams from coarse-grained simulations.

Small molecules often cross biological membranes by translocation. Multiple computational methods can be used to study this process. Nihit’s work addresses which of these methods works best (and why!), as you can read in this preprint.

When proteins bind to cell membranes they affect local membrane properties. In particular, the membrane can no longer fluctuate the way a free membrane would: the proteins suppress membrane fluctuations, which is entropically unfavorable. This results in a membrane-mediated interaction among membrane-bound proteins. You can read more about this effect in Kayla’s recent paper, which Read more about Kayla’s work on membrane-mediated protein interactions[…]

Addie’s work on understanding the sequence dependence of azobenzene quantum yield in DNA, a collaboration with the Ginger group, has been published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. You can access the paper though this link.

Addie and Nihit were recognized with prestigious awards for their outstanding contributions to the department: Addie received the Lyle H. Jensen Graduate Fellowship, and Nihit earned the Usha and S. Rao Varanasi Endowed Diversity Scholarship in Chemistry. Congratulations!

Kayla’s and Roie’s article on continuum simulations of cellular membranes has been published in the Annual Review of Computational Chemistry – Congratulations! You can access the paper using this link.