English

Pearling Instabilities of Membrane Tubes with Anchored Polymers

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-10-31 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We have studied the pearling instability induced on hollow tubular lipid vesicles by hydrophilic polymers with hydrophobic side groups along the backbone. The results show that the polymer concentration is coupled to local membrane curvature. The relaxation of a pearled tube is characterized by two different well-separated time scales, indicating two physical mechanisms. We present a model, which explains the observed phenomena and predicts polymer segregation according to local membrane curvature at late stages.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0004019,
  title  = {Pearling Instabilities of Membrane Tubes with Anchored Polymers},
  author = {Ilan Tsafrir and Dror Sagi and Tamar Arzi and Marie-Alice Guedeau-Boudeville and Vidar Frette and Daniel Kandel and Joel Stavans},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0004019},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages with 3 postscript figures