Samuel L. Foley, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Researcher

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I am a postdoc in the Department of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, in the group of Margaret Johnson. I am currently working on the kinetics of cargo capture during the early stages of clathrin-mediated endocytosis, as well as using kinetic modeling to assess the relative contribution of surface localization to the enhancement of enzyme activity.

Previously, I was a graduate student in the Deserno group at Carnegie Mellon, where I learned to leverage theoretical and computational tools to study lipid membranes. In my thesis work, I developed a modification of the utra-coarse-grained Cooke lipid model rendering it capable of simulating bilayers with differing tensions in the two monolayers, a state known as "differential stress". I then put this model to work investigating how differential stress alters first-order phase transitions in lipid membranes, shedding light on the recently-discovered "stiffening transition" observed in membrane simulations. I also developed a coarse-grained simulation technique (which we like to call membrane "sticky tape") to allow the simulation of asymmetric lipid bilayers with simltaneous area- and curvature-relaxation.

Soubias, O., Foley, S. L., Jian, X., Jackson, R. A., Zhang, Y., Rosenberg, E. M., Li, J., Heinrich, F., Johnson, M. E., Sodt, A. J., Randazzo, P. A., Byrd, R. A. (2024). The PH domain in the ArfGAP ASAP1 drives catalytic activation through an unprecedented allosteric mechanism. (Preprint)

Foley, S. L. & Deserno, M. (2024). Asymmetric Membrane "Sticky Tape" Enables Simultaneous Relaxation of Area and Curvature in Simulation. Journal of Chemical Physics. (DOI) (Preprint) (SI)

Foley, S. L., Varma, M., Hossein, A., & Deserno, M. (2023). Elastic and Thermodynamic Consequences of Lipid Membrane Asymmetry. Emerging Topics in Life Sciences. (DOI) (Email me for a pre-print)

Foley, S. L., Hossein, A., & Deserno, M. (2022). Fluid-Gel Coexistence in Lipid Membranes under Differential Stress. Biophysical Journal. (DOI) (Preprint) (SI)

Foley, S. L. & Deserno, M. (2020). Stabilizing Leaflet Asymmetry under Differential Stress in a Highly Coarse-Grained Lipid Membrane Model. Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. (DOI) (Preprint) (SI)

Foley, S. L. & Deserno, M. (2024). Quantifying Uncertainty in Trans-Membrane Stresses and Moments in Simulation. Methods in Enzymology. (DOI)