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 paper reveals that the PETase enzyme achieves synergistic acidic and basic catalysis for ester hydrolysis through its active site's local environment, which utilizes a proton shuttle for nucleophile generation and hydrogen bonding for transition state stabilization, thereby suggesting specific protein engineering strategies to enhance its plastic-degrading reactivity.
This paper presents prototype experiments at Diamond Light Source's VMXi beamline demonstrating the feasibility of combining droplet-on-demand tape drive sample delivery with X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) for time-resolved serial crystallography on a third-generation synchrotron, a methodology previously restricted to XFELs.
This paper introduces an improved "extended phase mapping" method that explicitly detects and accounts for phase defects caused by conduction blocks or anatomical boundaries, thereby eliminating false detections and providing a more reliable, physiologically consistent characterization of rotational drivers in cardiac arrhythmias across simulated, experimental, and clinical datasets.
Through extensive simulations and advanced analysis, this study demonstrates that the distinct aggregation propensity of Aβ42 compared to Aβ40 is encoded at the monomer level by Aβ42's higher β-structure propensity, more extended conformations, and greater hydrophobic exposure, particularly in the C-terminal region.
This study utilizes label-free Raman spectroscopy of isolated lipid droplets to reveal distinct, treatment-specific metabolic remodeling and lipid heterogeneity in normal Schwann cells versus malignant MPNST cells following cannabidiol treatment, ionizing radiation, and their combination, thereby establishing a novel platform for investigating lipid-mediated radiosensitization mechanisms.
This study utilizes a Monte Carlo-based membrane simulation framework to demonstrate that the mechanical properties of soft, deformable targets, particularly membrane bending rigidity and tension, fundamentally determine whether phagocytosis results in full engulfment, pushing, or partial biting (trogocytosis), thereby explaining how immune cells navigate the physical challenges of ingesting non-rigid biological targets.
This study quantitatively establishes multiplicative scaling laws that define how fibrinogen and thrombin concentrations distinctly program fibrin network architecture, revealing that thrombin primarily governs single-fiber growth kinetics while fibrinogen controls space-filling density and pore size across both purified and plasma clots.
To address the fragmentation of resources within the Martini Force Field Initiative, the authors introduce a sustainable, open-source web portal built on static site generation and serverless architectures that unifies parameters, tools, and workflows while lowering technical barriers for community contributions.
This paper introduces a competitive fluorescence immunoassay called intermolecular Quenchbody (iQ-body), which utilizes intermolecular FRET between an N-terminally fluorescent-labeled IgG antibody and an antigen-quencher conjugate to enable sensitive detection of small molecules like thyroxine using publicly available antibodies.
This study employs a computational model to demonstrate that diverse embryonic morphogenetic patterns, ranging from monolayer spheres to complex multilayer tissues, can be unifiedly generated and predicted by the interplay between cell polarity strength and its mechanical regulation.