English

Wrapping of Microparticles by Floppy Lipid Vesicles

Soft Condensed Matter 2020-11-11 v2

Abstract

Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the particles, an essential step in crossing the membrane for a variety of health and disease-related processes. A large body of theoretical and numerical work has focused on identifying the physical properties that underly wrapping. Using a model system of micron-sized colloidal particles and giant unilamellar lipid vesicles with tunable adhesive forces, we measure a wrapping phase diagram and make quantitative comparisons to theoretical models. Our data is consistent with a model of membrane-particle interactions accounting for the adhesive energy per unit area, membrane bending rigidity, particle size, and vesicle radius.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.03620,
  title  = {Wrapping of Microparticles by Floppy Lipid Vesicles},
  author = {Hendrik T. Spanke and Robert W. Style and Claire François-Martin and Maria Feofilova and Manuel Eisentraut and Holger Kress and Jaime Agudo-Canalejo and Eric R. Dufresne},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.03620},
  year   = {2020}
}