English

Long-range attraction of particles adhered to lipid vesicles

Soft Condensed Matter 2016-10-11 v2 Biological Physics

Abstract

Many biological systems fold thin sheets of lipid membrane into complex three-dimensional structures. This microscopic origami is often mediated by the adsorption and self-assembly of proteins on a membrane. As a model system to study adsorption-mediated interactions, we study the collective behavior of micrometric particles adhered to a lipid vesicle. We estimate the colloidal interactions using a maximum likelihood analysis of particle trajectories. When the particles are highly wrapped by a tense membrane, we observe strong long-range attractions with a typical binding energy of 150 kBTk_B T and significant forces extending a few microns.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.01802,
  title  = {Long-range attraction of particles adhered to lipid vesicles},
  author = {Raphael Sarfati and Eric R. Dufresne},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.01802},
  year   = {2016}
}