390 papers
Biophysics sits at the fascinating intersection where the laws of physics meet the complexity of living systems. This field uses tools like light, electricity, and mechanical forces to decode how cells move, how proteins fold, and how our senses translate the world around us. Rather than just observing biology, biophysicists measure and model life to understand the fundamental machinery that powers every organism.
On Gist.Science, we make these discoveries accessible by curating the latest preprints directly from bioRxiv. Our team processes every new submission in this category, providing both clear, plain-language overviews and detailed technical summaries so readers of all backgrounds can grasp the cutting-edge science. Below are the most recent biophysics papers from bioRxiv, ready for you to explore.
This study demonstrates that serum lipoproteins inhibit the formation of cytotoxic soluble oligomers of the Staphylococcus aureus toxin PSMα3, revealing that these early aggregation intermediates, rather than mature fibrils, drive cell death and highlighting the critical role of the cellular environment in modulating bacterial virulence.
This study reveals that *E. coli* biofilms function as a tunable hierarchical composite material where the mechanical properties and emergent structure arise from the constrained swelling of pEtN-cellulose interacting with rigid curli amyloid fibers, offering new insights for engineering living bio-sourced materials.
This study establishes a systematic framework for designing sequence-optimized peptides that rationally modulate the liquid-liquid phase separation of α-synuclein by integrating deep mutational scanning with biophysical characterization to define generalizable principles for engineering specific condensate regulators.
This study reveals that RNA acts as a context-dependent regulator of the virulent amyloid peptide PSMα3 and the host-defense peptide LL-37 by modulating their phase separation and aggregation dynamics, thereby selectively preserving PSMα3's cytotoxicity while suppressing LL-37's toxicity to human cells without compromising its antibacterial function.
This study demonstrates that the paradoxical right-skewed distribution of human chronotypes, despite a left-skewed distribution of intrinsic circadian periods, arises from stochastic variability in homeostatic sleep pressure dynamics near the unstable boundaries of circadian entrainment, cautioning against inferring intrinsic circadian period directly from chronotype.
This study demonstrates that purified CRY4a from domesticated Japanese quail exhibits magnetic properties similar to those of European robin CRY4a, establishing the quail as a promising new experimental model for investigating the mechanisms of avian magnetoreception.
This study reveals that the ciliate *Paramecium tetraurelia* achieves simultaneous feeding and swimming by partitioning its continuous ciliary array into distinct domains with unique spatio-temporal architectures, demonstrating that local heterogeneity in cilia patterning enables multiple fluid flow functions within a single cell.
This paper presents a rapid, ultra-low-cost method for fabricating optical-quality hemispherical solid immersion lenses using consumer-grade UV-curable resin, which significantly enhances the spatial resolution of standard microscopes to near-theoretical limits while offering a scalable and accessible solution for both research and optics education.
This paper introduces CapSACIN, a computationally feasible framework that abstracts viral capsid surfaces to enable high-throughput, atomistic investigation of virus-excipient interactions, successfully predicting thermal stability effects in porcine parvovirus and identifying molecular weaknesses at the 2-fold symmetry axis.
This study demonstrates that applying circuit topology to quantify intra-chain contact arrangements provides a fundamental framework for distinguishing between ordered and disordered proteins, predicting their folding states, and understanding their associated kinetics and thermodynamics.