Supervisor: Andrea Gamba
Living cells are self-organized structures made of proteins, lipids and sugars. Lipid membranes play a paramount role in eukaryotic cells, where they bound the cytosol, nucleus, and a large number of organelles that perform a variety of vital functions.
A fundamental question is: how does one and the same basic structure (the lipid membrane) specialize in such a way to perform quite different functions in distinct intracellular compartments?
This spontaneous differentiation can be seen as a symmetry-breaking process driven by the tendency of lipid membranes to phase-separate in regions enriched in different molecular factors, sort of "colors" that assign a peculiar identity to each distinct membrane region. The physical mechanism behind this phase-separation process is still poorly understood.
The proposed research is focused on the study of this self-organized process by statistical physics methods that include the use of analytical models, numerical simulations, and analysis of experimental data.
References:
1. J. Kirschbaum, D. Zwicker: Controlling biomolecular condensates via chemical reactions, Journal of the Royal Society Interface 18, 20210255, 2021.
2. E. Floris, A. Piras, L. Dall’Asta, A. Gamba, E. Hirsch, Emilio, C. Campa: Physics of compartmentalization: How phase separation and signaling shape membrane and organelle identity, Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal 19, 3225–3233, 2021.
3. M. Zamparo, D. Valdembri, G. Serini, I. Kolokolov, V. Lebedev, L. Dall’Asta, A. Gamba: Optimality in self-organized molecular sorting , Physical Review Letters 126, 088101, 2021.
- PE3_16 Physics of biological systems
- PE3_15 Statistical physics: phase transitions, condensed matter systems, models of complex systems, interdisciplinary applications
- PE3_13 Structure and dynamics of disordered systems, e.g. soft matter (gels, colloids, liquid crystals), granular matter, liquids, glasses, defects