Related papers: Effective free energy for pinned membranes
We theoretically consider specific adhesion of a fluctuating membrane to a hard substrate via the formation of bonds between receptors attached to the substrate and ligands in the membrane. By integrating out the degrees of freedom of the…
The efficiency of soft particles to stabilize emulsions is examined by measuring their desorption free energy, i.e., the mechanical work required to detach the particle from a fluid interface. Here, we consider rubber-like elastic as well…
Using the proof of Willmore's conjecture by Marques and Neves, we conjecture that the free energy of tensionless fluid membranes of arbitrary genus has an upper bound. This implies that the average genus of such a membrane, in equilibrium,…
The conformational free energy landscape of a system is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity of importance particularly in the study of soft matter and biological systems, in which the entropic contributions play a dominant role. While…
We study, by means of mean field calculations and Monte Carlo simulations of a lattice-gas model, the distribution of adhesion sites of a bilayer membrane and a supporting flat surface. Our model accounts for the many-body character of the…
The relation between thermal fluctuations and the mechanical response of a free membrane has been explored in great detail, both theoretically and experimentally. However, understanding this relationship for membranes, locally pinned by…
We use molecular dynamics to study the vibrations of a thermally fluctuating two-dimensional elastic membrane clamped at both ends. We directly extract the eigenmodes from resonant peaks in the frequency domain of the time-dependent height…
We consider a one-dimensional elastic membrane, which is pushed by growing filaments. The filaments tend to grow by creating local protrusions in the membrane and this process has surface energy and bending energy costs. Although it is…
This work addresses the question of whether it is possible to define simple pair-wise interaction terms to approximate free energies of proteins or polymers. Rather than ask how reliable a potential of mean force is, one can ask how…
The interplay of membrane proteins is vital for many biological processes, such as cellular transport, cell division, and signal transduction between nerve cells. Theoretical considerations have led to the idea that the membrane itself…
Membrane-fluctuation-induced attraction between ligand--receptor sites binding neighboring membranes is studied using meshless membrane simulations and the Weil--Farago two-dimensional lattice model. For the adhesion sites binding two…
Integral membrane proteins deform the surrounding bilayer creating long-ranged forces that influence distant proteins. These forces can be attractive or repulsive, depending on the proteins' shape, height, contact angle with the bilayer, as…
The adhesion of biological membranes is controlled by various types of receptor and ligand molecules. In this letter, we present a statistical-mechanical model for membranes that interact via receptor/ligand bonds of two different lengths.…
Cell membranes interact via anchored receptor and ligand molecules. Central questions on cell adhesion concern the binding affinity of these membrane-anchored molecules, the mechanisms leading to the receptor-ligand domains observed during…
The molecular distributions obtained from canonical Monte Carlo simulations can be used to find an approximate interaction energy. This serves as the basis of a method for estimating the binding free energy for a ligand to a protein which…
Ligand-receptor interactions are ubiquitous in biology and have become popular in materials in view of their applications to programmable self-assembly. Although, complex functionalities often emerge from the simultaneous interaction of…
Using a thermodynamic integration scheme, we compute the free energy cost per unit area, $\gamma$, of forming an interface between a crystal and a frozen structured wall, formed by particles frozen into the same equilibrium structure as the…
A theoretical approach has been undertaken in order to model the thermodynamic equilibrium of a vesicle adhering to a flat substrate. The vesicle is treated in a canonical description with a fixed number of sites. A finite number of these…
We study the phase behavior of a nematic liquid crystal confined between a flat substrate with strong anchoring and a patterned substrate whose structure and local anchoring strength we vary. By first evaluating an effective surface free…
We present here exact results for a one-dimensional gas, or fluid, of hard-sphere particles with attractive boundaries. The particles, which can exchange with a bulk reservoir, mediate an interaction between the boundaries. A…