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The cell membrane (also known as the plasma membrane or cytoplasmic membrane, and historically referred to as the plasmalemma) is a biological membrane that separates and protects the interior of a cell from the outside environment (the extracellular space). The cell membrane consists of a lipid bilayer, made up of two layers of phospholipids with cholesterols (a lipid component) interspersed between them, maintaining appropriate membrane fluidity at various temperatures.
Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computer simulation method for analyzing the physical movements of atoms and molecules. The atoms and molecules are allowed to interact for a fixed period of time, giving a view of the dynamic "evolution" of the system. In the most common version, the trajectories of atoms and molecules are determined by numerically solving Newton's equations of motion for a system of interacting particles, where forces between the particles and their potential energies are often calculated using interatomic potentials or molecular mechanical force fields.
Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials science to study molecular systems ranging from small chemical systems to large biological molecules and material assemblies. The simplest calculations can be performed by hand, but inevitably computers are required to perform molecular modelling of any reasonably sized system.
The thermosensor histidine kinase DesK from Bacillus subtilis senses changes in membrane fluidity initiating an adaptive response. Structural changes in DesK have been implicated in transmembrane sign
Wiley-Blackwell2015
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The proteolytic cleavage of the transmembrane (TM) domain of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) releases amyloid-beta (A beta) peptides, which accumulation in the brain tissue is an early indicator o
Amer Chemical Soc2016
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The physical and chemical characterization of biological membranes is of fundamental importance for understanding the functional role of lipid bilayers in shaping cells and organelles, steering vesicl