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Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Pulling Membrane Nanotubes from Giant Unilamellar Vesicles
Published on: December 7, 2017
Geometry of proteins: hydrogen bonding, sterics, and marginally compact tubes
Jayanth R Banavar1, Marek Cieplak, Alessandro Flammini
1Department of Physics, 104 Davey Laboratory, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
Abstract:
The functionality of proteins is governed by their structure in the native state. Protein structures are made up of emergent building blocks of helices and almost planar sheets. A simple coarse-grained geometrical model of a flexible tube barely subject to compaction provides a unified framework for understanding the common character of globular proteins. We argue that a recent critique of the tube idea is not well founded.
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