Phys. Rev. Lett. 124(3), 038001 (2020)
Yachong Guo, Marco Werner, Jean Baptiste Fleury and Vladimir A. Baulin

Cholesterol is a crucial component of mammalian cell membranes that takes part in many vital processes. It is generally accepted that cholesterol stabilizes the membrane and induces transitions into ordered states. In contrast to expectations, we demonstrate that cholesterol can […]

Scientific Reports, 9, 4694 (2019)
Berardo M. Manzi, Marco Werner, Elena P. Ivanova, Russell J. Crawford and Vladimir A. Baulin
Recent technological advances have allowed the development of a new generation of nanostructured materials, such as those displaying both mechano-bactericidal activity and substrata that favor the growth of mammalian cells. Nanomaterials that come into contact with biological […]

J. Chem. Phys., 149, 014902 (2018)
Adrien Berthault, Marco Werner, Vladimir A. Baulin
The Single Chain Mean Field theory is used to link coarse-grained models of amphiphilic molecules with analytical models for membrane elasticity, where phenomenological parameters are deduced from explicit molecular models and force fields. We estimate the elastic constants based on the free energy of […]

J. Synchrotron Rad. 25, 874-877 (2018)
Vi Khanh Truong, Jitraporn Vongsvivut, Nipuni Mahanamanam Geeganagamage, Mark J. Tobin, Pere Luque, Vladimir A. Baulin, Marco Werner, Shane Maclaughlin, Russell J. Crawford and Elena P. Ivanova
Damselflies Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis exhibiting black wings are found in the western Mediterranean, Algeria, France, Italy, Spain and Monaco. Wing pigmentation is caused by the presence of melanin, which is involved […]

Biointerphases 13, 028501 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1116/1.5022145
M. Werner, T. Auth, P. A. Beales, J. B. Fleury, F. Höök, H. Kress, R. C. Van Lehn, M. Müller, E. P. Petrov, L. Sarkisov, J.-U. Sommer and V. A. Baulin
Synthetic polymers, nanoparticles, and carbon-based materials have great potential in applications including drug delivery, gene transfection, in vitro and in vivo imaging, and […]

Nano-Micro Lett., 10, 36 (2018)
Chris M. Bhadra, Marco Werner, Vladimir A. Baulin, Vi Khanh Truong, Mohammad Al Kobaisi, Song Ha Nguyen, Armandas Balcytis, Saulius Juodkazis, James Y. Wang, David E. Mainwaring, Russell J. Crawford, Elena P. Ivanova
One of the major challenges faced by the biomedical industry is the development of robust synthetic surfaces that can resist […]

Soft Matter, 13, 3690-3700 (2017)
Sivaramakrishnan Ramadurai, Marco Werner, Nigel K.H. Slater, Aaron Martin, Vladimir A. Baulin, Tia Keyes
Deeper understanding of the molecular interactions between polymeric materials and the lipid membrane is important across a range of applications from permeation for drug delivery to encapsulation for immuno-evasion. Using highly fluidic microcavity supported lipid bilayers, we studied […]

ACS Macro Lett., 6, pp 247–251 (2017)
Marco Werner, Jasper Bathmann, Vladimir A. Baulin, and Jens-Uwe Sommer
We propose a theory to predict the passive translocation of flexible polymers through amphiphilic membranes. By using a generic model for the potential felt by a monomer across the membrane we calculate the free energy profile for homopolymers as a function […]

Biomacromolecules, (2014) Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/bm501266x

Marco Werner  and Jens-Uwe Sommer
We investigate adsorption and passive translocation of random amphiphilic copolymers interacting with a self-assembled lipid bilayer membrane. By using the bond fluctuation model with explicit solvent, we consider random copolymers under variation of the fraction, H̅, of hydrophobic sites and chain length. Our results indicate a point of […]

J.-U. Sommer, M. Werner and V. A. Baulin

Europhysics Letters, 98, 18003 (2012)

Monte Carlo simulations using an explicit solvent model indicate a new pathway for translocation of a polymer chain through a lipid bilayer. We consider a polymer chain composed of repeat units with a given hydrophobicity and a coarse-grained model of a lipid bilayer in […]