Biological Physics and Soft Matter (BIO)
Leader: Prof. Ilpo Vattulainen
Biological physics, as many people call this discipline nowadays, is an excellent example of a cross-disciplinary field of science that bridges people with various backgrounds to work on problems whose proper understanding is crucial for life. Although much has been done, we are still on our early days of understanding the underlying physical principles that govern the behavior of biological systems.
The Biological Physics and Soft Matter Group focuses on the theory and modeling of biologically relevant soft and condensed matter systems. The work includes the development of theoretical and computational techniques for multiscale modeling, and applications of these methods to study physicochemical properties of soft and condensed matter systems over a multitude of scales.
The research covers lipid membranes (as well as interactions of these systems with e.g. drugs, alcohols, sterols, and nanoparticles), drug delivery, structure and dynamics of protein systems (in particular protein-membrane complexes), lipoproteins, glycosystems, and the non-equilibrium dynamics at soft interfaces and solid surfaces. The focus is more and more on cross-disciplinary problems in the field where the traditional borderlines between physics, chemistry, and computational and medical sciences tend to vanish.
Recent highlights
- 3D Pressure Field in Lipid Membranes and Membrane-Protein Complexes. O. H. S. Ollila, J. Risselada, M. Louhivuori, E. Lindahl, I. Vattulainen, and S. J. Marrink. Physical Review Letters vol. 102, 078101 (2009).
- Conformational changes and slow dynamics through microsecond polarized molecular simulation of an integral Kv1.2 ion channel. P. Bjelkmar, P. Niemela, I. Vattulainen, and E. Lindahl. PLoS Computational Biology vol. 5, e1000289 (2009).
- BODIPY-cholesterol: A new tool to visualize sterol trafficking in living cells and organisms. M. Holtta-Vuori, R.-L. Uronen, J. Repakova, E. Salonen, I. Vattulainen, P. Panula, Z. Li, R. Bittman, and E. Ikonen. Traffic 9, 1839-1849 (2008).
- Computer simulation study of fullerene translocation through lipid membranes. J. Wong-Ekkabut, S. Baoukina, W. Triampo, I.-M. Tang, D. P. Tieleman, and L. Monticelli. Nature Nanotech. 3, 363-368 (2008).
- Real-Time Translocation of Fullerene Reveals Cell Contraction. E. Salonen, S. Lin, M. L. Reid, M. Allegood, X. Wang, A. M. Rao, I. Vattulainen, and P.-C. Ke. Small 4, 1986-1992 (2008).
- Lateral Diffusion in Lipid Membranes Through Collective Flows. E. Falck, T. Rog, M. Karttunen, and I. Vattulainen. Journal of the American Chemical Society 130, 44 (2008).
- Lipid Transmembrane Asymmetry and Intrinsic Membrane Potential: Two Sides of the Same Coin. A. A. Gurtovenko and I. Vattulainen. Journal of the American Chemical Society 129, 5358 (2007).
- Assessing the Nature of Lipid Raft Membranes. P. Niemela, S. Ollila, M. T. Hyvonen, M. Karttunen, and I. Vattulainen. PLoS Computational Biology 3, 304-312 (2007).
- Transient Ordered Domains in Single-Component Phospholipid Bilayers. T. Murtola, T. Rog, E. Falck, M. Karttunen, and I. Vattulainen. Physical Review Letters 97, 238102 (2006).
- Pore formation coupled to ion transport through lipid membranes as induced by transmembrane ionic charge imbalance: Atomistic molecular dynamics study. A. A. Gurtovenko and I. Vattulainen. Journal of the American Chemical Society 127, 17570 (2005).
- Novel Methods in Soft Matter Simulations. Mikko Karttunen, Ilpo Vattulainen, and Ari Lukkarinen (Eds.). (Springer-Verlag, Berline, 2004).