August 9, 2021.<\/strong> More exciting funding news: the DSF Charitable Foundation<\/a> will fund a seed project between the Deserno group and the group of Rebecca Taylor<\/a> in Mechanical Engineering devoted to \"Real-time mapping of membrane tension in GUVs and cultured cells using fluorescence DNA-based nano mechanosensors<\/em>.\" The goal is to engineer a nanoscopic size sensor that can bind to membranes, locally senses their state of tension, and produce an optical readout.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> July 29, 2021.<\/strong> We're excited to announce that Amirali Hossein has successfully defended his thesis on \"Investigation of Mechanical Properties of Asymmetric Lipid Bilayers via Coarse-Grained Simulation.\u201d He will soon be leaving us for a postdoctoral research position at the NIH, and we hope to see more exciting new science from him soon!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> Jun 3, 2021:<\/strong> Excellent news: The Division of Chemistry at NSF will fund our project on \"The Role of Differential Stress in the Physics of Asymmetric Lipid Membranes<\/a>.\" This project will try to understand the way in which lipid membranes can be asymmetric\u2014both in terms of composition and in terms of stress\u2014and how we can experimentally determine the differential stress, i.e.<\/em>, the stress difference between leaflets, even if we cannot actually \"pull\" on a single leaflet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> Jun 1, 2021:<\/strong> Muhammed's paper \"Identifying systematic errors in a power spectral analysis of simulated lipid membranes<\/a>\" has appear in the Journal of Chemical Physics! In it, he takes a deep-dive into the details of analyzing the fluctuations of simulated lipid membranes, showing how many of the standard observables one typically extracts from power spectra depend uncomfortably strongly on seemingly minor details, for instance on how precisely one defines the membrane surface or a lipid director.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> May 17\u2013Jun 18, 2021:<\/strong> Markus Deserno, together with Carlos Marques<\/a>, Rumiana Dimova<\/a>, and Andrej Ko\u0161mrlj<\/a>, have run a successful KITP<\/a> program on \"The Physics of Elastic Films: from Biological Membranes to Extreme Mechanics<\/a>\". It was incredibly challenging to immitate the legendary atmosphere of KITP remotely, but we tried hard and brought lots of technology together: Zoom, Slack, Gathertown\u2014you name it. We think it worked, based on the persistently large turnout during the discussion session. By the way, all talks, as well as the lively discussion sessions, are recorded and you can watch them on our program's program page<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> Feb 22\u201326, 2021:<\/strong> We have visited the BPS meeting\u2014on Zoom! Quite a different experience from the buzzing vibe of the real meeting, but Covid made it necessary to run this remote. We all hope that next year's conference in San Francisco will be in person again!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> Jan 7, 2021:<\/strong> Amirali's paper on \"Stiffening transition in asymmetric lipid bilayers: The role of highly ordered domains and the effect of temperature and size<\/a>\" has appeared in the Journal of Chemical Physics! The paper offers a more detailed analysis for why sufficiently stress asymmetric membranes might be much stiffer than their symmetric counterparts. Specifically, Amirali shows that the compressed leaflet of such membranes might host finite-size gel domains.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div> Nov 30, 2020:<\/strong>\u00a0Markus Deserno has been awarded\u00a0<\/span>the 2021 Thomas E. Thompson Award from the\u00a0Biophysical Society<\/a>\u2018s\u00a0Membrane Structure and Function<\/a>\u00a0Subgroup for his\u00a0use of theory and simple models to discover fundamental properties of membranes and his unique ability to connect abstract theoretical concepts to real-life functional processes. For more, see this short\u00a0CMU\u00a0press announcement<\/a>!<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-555","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/555\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.phys.cmu.edu\/deserno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}