Related papers: Stable patterns of membrane domains at corrugated …
We review a few representative examples of granular experiments or models where phase separation, accompanied by domain coarsening, is a relevant phenomenon. We first elucidate the intrinsic non-equilibrium, or athermal, nature of granular…
Central to understanding membrane bound cell signaling is to quantify how the membrane ultra-structure consisting of transient spatial domains modulates signaling and how the signaling influences this ultra-structure. Yet, measuring the…
We discuss different mechanisms for curvature-induced domain formation in multicomponent lipid membranes and present a theoretical model that allows us to study the interplay between the domains. The model represents the membrane by two…
Much of our understanding of the physical properties of raft domains in biological membranes, and some insight into the mechanisms underlying their formation stem from atomistic simulations of simple model systems, especially ternary…
We study the dynamic structure of lipid domain inclusions embedded within a phase-separated reconstituted lipid bilayer in contact with a swarming flow of gliding filamentous actin. Passive circular domains transition into highly-deformed…
Biomolecular condensates constitute a newly recognized form of spatial organization in living cells. Although many condensates are believed to form as a result of phase separation, the physicochemical properties that determine the phase…
Experiments on supported lipid bilayers featuring liquid ordered/disordered domains have shown that the spatial arrangement of the lipid domains and their chemical composition are strongly affected by the curvature of the substrate.…
The free energy of a crystalline domain coexisting with a liquid phase on a spherical vesicle may be approximated by an elastic or stretching energy and a line tension term. The stretching energy generally grows as the area of the domain,…
Fluid mixtures, such as the cellular cytoplasm and synthetic DNA nanostars, can spontaneously compartmentalize into many coexisting phases through liquid-liquid phase separation. Despite the diversity of fluid structures that emerge from…
Cell membranes phase separate into ordered ${\rm L_o}$ and disordered ${\rm L_d}$ domains depending on their compositions. This membrane compartmentalization is heterogeneous and regulates the localization of specific proteins related to…
Rafts, or functional domains, are transient nano- or mesoscopic structures in the plasma membrane and are thought to be essential for many cellular processes such as signal transduction, adhesion, trafficking and lipid/protein sorting.…
We present a phenomenological theory for the phase behavior of ternary mixtures of cholesterol and saturated and unsaturated lipids, one which describes both liquid and gel phases, and illuminates the mechanism of the behavior. In a binary…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
The spatio-temporal organization of proteins and the associated morphological changes in membranes are of importance in cell signaling. Several mechanisms that promote the aggregation of proteins at low cell surface concentrations have been…
We investigate the phase diagram of a two-component associating fluid mixture in the presence of selectively adsorbing substrates. The mixture is characterized by a bulk phase diagram which displays peculiar features such as closed loops of…
Thin films of binary mixtures that interact through isotropic forces and directionally specific "hydrogen bonding" are considered through Monte Carlo simulations. We show, in good agreement with experiment, that the single phase of these…
Stationary periodic patterns are widespread in natural sciences, ranging from nano-scale electrochemical and amphiphilic systems to mesoscale fluid, chemical and biological media and to macro-scale vegetation and cloud patterns. Their…
Multicomponent lipid mixtures exhibit complex phase behavior, including coexistence of nanoscopic fluid phases in ternary mixtures mimicking the composition of the outer leaflet of mammalian plasma membrane. The physical mechanisms…
The dynamics of a membrane coupled to an active fluid on top of a substrate is considered theoretically. It is assumed that the director field of the active fluid has rotational symmetry in the membrane plane. This situation is likely to be…
We study the pinning of a two-dimensional membrane to a patterned substrate within elastic theory both in the bending rigidity and in the strain dominated regimes. We find that both the in-plane strains and the bending rigidity can lead to…