📣 Hear! Hear! 🦋 Behold this Bluetorial on a cool paper written with my PhD student Nathaniel Wesnak 🧪 If you want to dive into the rabbit hole of lipid flop-flop and its description as a stochastic process—here’s your TEASER TRAILER on some flippin’ awesome work: doi.org/10.1063/5.03... 1/26

Stochastic process description of lipid flip-flop

Since lipid bilayers are self-assembled macroscopic aggregates, their constituent lipid molecules can spontaneously transition between the two leaflets. This so

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Self-assembly can help cells make decisions: see Sam's awesome work!

Sam Foley@samuelfoley.com · 2mo ago

🧪⚛️ Our paper is finally published in Phys Rev Research! doi.org/10.1103/cnfz... Can cells make decisions using equilibrium physical principles, without resorting to irreversible, energy-consuming signaling cascades? We say yes, with the help of self-assembling membrane proteins! 🧵(1/7)

📣 To celebrate Biophysics Week, the Membrane Structure and Function Subgroup (MSAF) of @biophysicalsoc.bsky.social will host a webinar on March 24 at 11am EDT. Our speakers are @mejohnson81.bsky.social, @ibudin.bsky.social, and Cecília Leal (not on 🦋). 🧪 👀 More info in the alt text! Please share! 🔄

Driving membrane fission is not quite as hard as it seems (at least to me!). Very happy to contribute to this work from Wade Zeno’s lab!

Wade Zeno@zenoresearch.bsky.social · 5mo ago

New preprint from my lab! Clathrin doesn’t bind membranes directly, yet it can still drive membrane bending and fission by transmitting its mechanical properties through adaptor proteins. Our collaborators: @samuelfoley.com @mejohnson81.bsky.social BioRxiv link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Open science tools like Simularium help bring science to life. @mejohnson81.bsky.social shares how it has helped her stoke curiosity in @jhuartssciences.bsky.social students and work with colleagues across timezones. #OpenScienceWeek

How much do dimer binding affinities change for proteins on the 2D membrane vs in solution? We go beyond rigid-body entropy estimates to show conformational variations can strongly select for 2D association. Very proud of Dr Adip Jhaveri and team's comprehensive work! doi.org/10.1063/5.02...

Protein dimerization in 2D vs 3D: Geometric allostery enhances binding affinity

Dimerization underpins all macromolecular assembly processes, both on and off the membrane. While the strength of dimerization, KD, is commonly quantified in so

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Does protein dimerization always help targeting and dwell time on DNA? Not for a population! Dwell time is especially sensitive to spacing between DNA targets. Nonspecific binding and facilitated (1D) diffusion also play a key role. Super proud of Mankun Sang’s work! doi.org/10.1101/2025...

The Natural Philosophy Symposium is underway! I had some idea of live-skeeting, but the real-time event is too absorbing. www.naturalphilosophyhopkins.org/natural-phil... Anyway, we've had: (cont)

Can sensing of membrane receptors be switched on at tunable threshold densities, without active processing? Proud to share this preprint led by the awesome Dr Foley, please check it out!

Sam Foley@samuelfoley.com · last yr.

I’m excited to finally share our new preprint! Membrane-associated assembly processes like CME function as precisely-tunable, spatially targetable, robust on/off switches that don’t require energy at decision-time. arxiv.org/abs/2505.17290 🧪

For any of my friends at the #APS Global Physics Summit, come to the Macromolecular Assembly in Cells II session today at 3pm to hear from me about how clathrin self-assembly is tuned to sense cargo receptors!