Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 39: Focus Session: Theoretical Modeling and Simulation of Biomolecular Condensates III (joint session CPP/BP)
BP 39.4: Vortrag
Freitag, 13. März 2026, 10:30–10:45, ZEU/0260
Coarse-grained model to study the effects of electric fields on protein interactions — •Agaya Johnson1, Debes Ray2,4, Mahnoush Madani3, Jan Dhont2,3, Florian Platten2,3, Kyongok Kang2, and Sofia Kantorovich1 — 1University of Vienna, Kolingasse 14-16, 1090, Vienna, Austria. — 2nstitute of Biological Information Processing IBI-4, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52428 Jülich, Germany. — 3Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. — 4Solid State Physics Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai 400085, India.
Proteins can undergo transition between a wide range of organisational states, from soluble monomers to disordered phases and ordered structures. Experiments have shown that lysozyme in sodium thiocyanate solution can form homogeneous, crystalline, or liquid phases depending on the salt and protein concentrations, and that these phase boundaries can be shifted by applying an electric field. We present a coarse-grained model of lysozyme in sodium thiocyanate solution, representing the protein as an ellipsoid decorated with charged and adhesive surface patches. Counterions and monovalent salt are treated explicitly via excluded-volume repulsion and Coulombic interactions. We investigate (i) how patch size and salt*patch interactions influence ion distributions around a single protein, with and without an external electric field, and (ii) the resulting effective interactions between two proteins as functions of patch properties, salt concentration, and applied electric field.
Keywords: phase separation; coarse-graining