Coarse grained molecular simulations of membrane adhesion domains
Abstract
We use a coarse grained molecular model of supported lipid bilayers to study the formation of adhesion domains. We find that this process is a first order phase transition, triggered by a combination of pairwise short range attractive interactions between the adhesion bonds and many-body Casimir-like interactions, mediated by the membrane thermal undulations. The simulation results display an excellent agreement with the recently proposed Weil-Farago 2D lattice model, in which the occupied and empty sites represent, respectively, the adhesion bonds and unbound segments of the membrane. A second phase transition, into a hexatic phase, is observed when the attraction between the adhesion bonds is further strengthened.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1406.5713,
title = {Coarse grained molecular simulations of membrane adhesion domains},
author = {Nadiv Dharan and Oded Farago},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.5713},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in J. Chem. Phys