Related papers: Membrane tension lowering induced by protein activ…
The function of membrane-embedded proteins such as ion channels depends crucially on their conformation. We demonstrate how conformational changes in asymmetric membrane proteins may be inferred from measurements of their diffusion. Such…
In hydrodynamic descriptions of lipid bilayers, the membrane is often approximated as being impermeable to the surrounding, solute-containing fluid. However, biological and in vitro lipid membranes are influenced by their permeability and…
Interactions mediated by the cell membrane between inclusions, such as membrane proteins or antimicrobial peptides, play important roles in their biological activity. They also constitute a fascinating challenge for physicists, since they…
We investigate the properties of membranes under tension by Monte-Carlo simulations of a generic coarse-grained model for lipid bilayers. We give a comprising overview of the behavior of several membrane characteristics, such as the area…
Many biological systems are appropriately viewed as passive inclusions immersed in an active bath: from proteins on active membranes to microscopic swimmers confined by boundaries. The non-equilibrium forces exerted by the active bath on…
Unlike their model membrane counterparts, biological membranes are richly decorated with a heterogeneous assembly of membrane proteins. These proteins are so tightly packed that their excluded area interactions can alter the free energy…
We propose a methodology to measure the mechanical properties of membranes from their fluctuations and apply this to optical microscopy measurements of giant unilamellar vesicles of lipids. We analyze the effect of the projection of thermal…
Biological membranes undergo noticeable thermal fluctuations at physiological temperatures. When two membranes approach each other, they hinder the out of plane fluctuations of the other. This hindrance leads to an entropic repulsive force…
Soft matter consists of meso-scale (nm~{\mu}m) structures that are formed by weak interactions and reorganized under thermal fluctuations. The resulting complex relaxation phenomena may be probed with microrheology, by observing the…
We use analytical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations to determine the thermal fluctuation spectrum of a membrane patch of a few tens of nanometer in size, whose corners are located at a fixed distance $d$ above a plane rigid surface.…
Dynamics of double membrane films is investigated in the long-wavelength limit including the overdamped squeezing mode. We demonstrate that thermal fluctuations essentially modify the character of the mode due to its nonlinear coupling to…
Molecular dynamics simulations have revealed a dramatic increase, with increasing temperature, of the amplitude of electrostatic fluctuations caused by water at the active site of metalloprotein plastocyanin. The increased breadth of…
The adhesion bonds connecting a lipid bilayer to an underlying surface may undergo a condensation transition resulting from an interplay between a short range attractive potential between them, and a long range fluctuation-induced potential…
Normal thermal fluctuations of the cell membrane have been studied extensively using high resolution microscopy and focused light, particularly at the peripheral regions of a cell. We use a single probe particle attached non-specifically to…
Tension in lipid membranes is often controlled externally, by pulling on the boundary of the membrane or changing osmotic pressure across a curved membrane. But modifications of the tension can also be induced in an internal fashion, for…
We study the effects of thermal fluctuations on symmetric tensionless heterogeneous (two-component) fluid membranes in a simple minimal model. Close to the critical point $T_c$ of the associated miscibility phase transition of the…
We report the first measurements of the intrinsic strain fluctuations of living cells using a recently-developed tracer correlation technique along with a theoretical framework for interpreting such data in heterogeneous media with…
Theoretical studies of nearly spherical vesicles and microemulsion droplets, that present typical examples for thermally-excited systems that are subject to constraints, are reviewed. We consider the shape fluctuations of such systems…
Microorganism motility often takes place within complex, viscoelastic fluid environments, e.g., sperm in cervicovaginal mucus and bacteria in biofilms. In such complex fluids, strains and stresses generated by the microorganism are stored…
An accurate description of the structure and dynamics of interfacial water is essential for phospholipid membranes, since it determines their function and their interaction with other molecules. Here we consider water confined in stacked…