English

Indirect interactions of membrane-adsorbed cylinders

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-10 v2 Subcellular Processes

Abstract

Biological and biomimetic membranes often contain aggregates of embedded or adsorbed macromolecules. In this article, the indirect interactions of cylindrical objects adhering to a planar membrane are considered theoretically. The adhesion of the cylinders causes a local perturbation of the equilibrium membrane shape, which leads to membrane-mediated interactions. For a planar membrane under lateral tension, the interaction is repulsive for a pair of cylinders adhering to the same side of the membrane, and attractive for cylinders adhering at opposite membrane sides. For a membrane in an external harmonic potential, the interaction of adsorbed cylinders is always attractive and increases if forces perpendicular to the membrane act on the cylinders.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0309322,
  title  = {Indirect interactions of membrane-adsorbed cylinders},
  author = {Thomas R. Weikl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0309322},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 8 figures; typos corrected