Lipid regulated channel

How a small Martini lipid can shift the conformation, and thereby effect the functioning, of an important membrane protein ... Sounds like a fairy tale ? It is for real ! See Miranda et al., Lipid Regulation of HERG1 Channel, Nature Commun. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21681-8

Go for a Martini at the Bar

The power of combining Go-potentials with Martini is nicely demonstrated in this paper from Poma and co-workers, showing how the flexibility and membrane binding mode of an F-Bar protein can be accurately captured: Mahmood et al., Front. Biomol. Sci., 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2021.619381

Moltemplate

Want to do fancy simulations ? Perhaps Moltemplate is a suitable tool - it can now generate input files which allow you to run Martini simulations for complex systems using LAMMPS.

Industrial processes

A cool example of validating Martini in capturing the phase behaviour of wax-water mixtures under confinement, fundamental to industiral processes such as the synthesis of transportation fuels. For details, see this paper from Economou and coworkers.

New PhD and Postdoc positions

We have job openings for two positions:

(1) PhD position in Non-Equilibrium Cellular Processes

(2) PhD/Postdoc position in Biomolecular Simulation of Photosynthetic Membranes

For more details on these positions, and how to apply, see here.

Martini hangover

hangover.pngBe careful - drinking too many Martinis or being an inexperienced drinker may cause a severe hangover.

A recent paper from the Voth group provides a clear example of this downside, in particular the entropy-enthalpy compensation which is inherent to CG models in general, including Martini.

For details, see: Jarin et al., JCTC, 2021.