Related papers: Membrane tension lowering induced by protein activ…
Many biological functions rely on the reshaping of cell membranes, in particular into nanotubes, which are covered in vivo by dynamic actin networks. Nanotubes are subject to thermal fluctuations, but the effect of these on cell functions…
Whether live cell membranes show miscibility phase transitions (MPTs), and if so, how they fluctuate near the transitions remain outstanding unresolved issues in physics and biology alike. Motivated by these questions we construct a generic…
We propose a mechanism for mechanical regulation at the membrane of living cells, based on the exchange of membrane area between the cell membrane and a membrane reservoir. The reservoir is composed of invaginated membrane microdomains…
The biological function of membranes is closely related to their softness, which is often studied through the membranes' thermally-driven fluctuations. The analysis commonly assumes that the relaxation rate of a pure bending deformation is…
The effect of AC electric fields on the elasticity of supported lipid bilayers has been investigated at the microscopic level using grazing incidence synchrotron x-ray scattering. A strong decrease in the membrane tension up to 1mN/m and a…
We study the nucleation of a single pore in a fluctuating lipid membrane, specifically taking into account the membrane fluctuations, as well as the shape fluctuations of the pore. For large enough pores, the nucleation free energy is…
We consider how membrane fluctuations can modify the miscibility of lipid mixtures, that is to say how the phase diagram of a boundary-constrained membrane is modified when the membrane is allowed to fluctuate freely in the case of zero…
We discuss thermal and active fluctuations of a compressible bilayer vesicle by using the results of hydrodynamic theory for vesicles. Coupled Langevin equations for the membrane deformation and the density fields are employed to calculate…
Motivated by the still ongoing debate about the various possible meanings of the term surface tension of bilayer membranes, we present here a detailed discussion that explains the differences between the "intrinsic", "renormalized", and…
Membrane curvature sensing is essential for a diverse range of biological processes. Recent experiments have revealed that a single nanometer-sized septin protein can distinguish between membrane-coated glass beads of one micron and three…
Cells modify their volume in response to changes in osmotic pressure but it is usually assumed that other active shape variations do not involve significant volume fluctuations. Here we report experiments demonstrating that water transport…
We investigate conductance and conductance fluctuations of two transmembrane proteins, bacteriorhodopsin and proteorhodopsin, belonging to the family of protein light receptors. These proteins are widely diffused in aqueous environments,…
We consider two types of fluctuations in the mass-action equilibrium in protein binding networks. The first type is driven by relatively slow changes in total concentrations (copy numbers) of interacting proteins. The second type, to which…
To explain the appearance of heterogeneities in the plasma membrane, I propose a hypothesis which begins with the observation that fluctuations in the membrane curvature are coupled to the difference between compositions in one leaf and the…
Biological activity gives rise to non-equilibrium fluctuations in the cytoplasm of cells; however, there are few methods to directly measure these fluctuations. Using a reconstituted actin cytoskeleton, we show that the bending dynamics of…
Biologically driven non-equilibrium fluctuations are often characterized by their non-Gaussianity or by an "effective temperature", which is frequency dependent and higher than the ambient temperature. We address these two measures…
Recent measurements of the short-wavelength (~ 1--100 nm) fluctuations in stacks of lipid membranes have revealed two distinct relaxations: a fast one (decay rate of ~ 0.1 ns^{-1}), which fits the known baroclinic mode of bulk lamellar…
Lipid membranes constitute very particular materials: on the one hand, they break very easily under microscopical stretching; on the other hand, they are extremely flexible, presenting deformations even at small scales. Consequently, a…
Using analytical calculations and computer simulations we consider both the lateral diffusion of a membrane protein and the fluctuation spectrum of the membrane in which the protein is embedded. The membrane protein interacts with the…
Mesoscopic active systems exhibit various unique behaviours - absent in passive systems - due to the forces generated by the corresponding constituents by converting their available free energies. However, estimating these forces - which…