388 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 naturally occurring cysteine-less LOV domains from halophilic archaea exhibit magnetic field-dependent fluorescence, revealing that radical-pair magnetosensitivity is a widespread property in natural proteins rather than an artifact of engineering.
This study introduces a systematic NMR-characterized benchmark of mutation-induced fold switching in the GA/GB protein system to evaluate deep learning and physics-based modeling tools, revealing that while certain AlphaFold2-based algorithms can predict mutant effects at specific sites, current methods still face significant position-dependent limitations in accurately forecasting conformational state changes.
This paper uses information theory to demonstrate that biological organisms lack sufficient internal information to fully pre-specify their microscopic organization, establishing a coarse-graining threshold that necessitates the genome act as a coarse specification compiled by shared physical dynamics and environmental randomness rather than a deterministic program.
Using Multi-Conformation Continuum Electrostatics (MCCE) simulations, this study demonstrates that kinase inhibitors frequently undergo dynamic shifts in protonation and tautomer states upon binding, revealing that minority species can become dominant in the bound complex and highlighting the critical need to consider full protonation and tautomer ensembles for accurate prediction of binding energetics.
This study utilizes all-atom molecular dynamics simulations of AAA+ unfoldases to demonstrate how structural asymmetry establishes position-dependent allosteric networks that convert stochastic ATP hydrolysis into directional substrate translocation while accommodating the variable stepping behaviors observed experimentally.
The authors present a novel coarse-grained protein model in explicit solvent that preserves backbone dihedral angle information by assigning two additional degrees of freedom to each residue bead, successfully reproducing residue-level structural details consistent with crystal structures and all-atom simulations while enabling significantly larger time and length scale studies.
This study reveals that increasing the crosslink concentration in ionically crosslinked alginate hydrogels beyond a critical stoichiometric ratio induces a transition from a homogeneous network to a coarse bundle-like structure, which paradoxically reduces bulk elasticity and microviscosity while enhancing ductility, demonstrating that higher crosslinking does not necessarily yield optimal mechanical performance.
The paper introduces Nilas, a low-energy cryo-FIB milling strategy that minimizes beam damage to produce ultra-thin lamellae, thereby significantly enhancing the resolution and molecular mass sensitivity of in situ structural biology to enable the detection of smaller macromolecular complexes like RNA polymerase III.
This study demonstrates that the plasma membrane is organized into distinct protein-rich and protein-poor domains driven by the differential partitioning of specific proteins and lipids, a structural heterogeneity that persists in isolated vesicles and likely facilitates the segregation of various cellular processes.
This study integrates experimental biophysical measurements and computational simulations to demonstrate how the conformational flexibility of a single glycosidic linkage in *Vibrio cholerae* exopolysaccharide (VPS) dictates the polymer's compaction and nonclassical entanglement, thereby establishing the molecular basis for biofilm matrix mechanics.