Related papers: Geometry of membranes
Unravelling the physical mechanisms behind the organisation of lipid domains is a central goal in cell biology and membrane biophysics. Previous studies on cells and model lipid bilayers featuring phase-separated domains found an intricate…
We consider membranes as fluid deformable surface and allow for higher order geometric terms in the bending energy. The evolution equations are derived and numerically solved using surface finite elements. The higher order geometric terms…
Statistical ensembles of flexible two-dimensional fluid membranes arise naturally in the description of many physical systems. Typically one encounters such systems in a regime of low tension but high stiffness against bending, which is…
A theory of chiral lipid membranes is proposed on the basis of a concise free energy density which includes the contributions of the bending and the surface tension of membranes, as well as the chirality and orientational variation of…
Shapes of planar lipid monolayer domains at the air-water interface are theoretically and numerically investigated by minimizing the formation energy of the domains which consist of the surface energy, line tension energy, and dipole…
The biological membrane, which compartmentalizes the cell and its organelles, exhibit wide variety of macroscopic shapes of varying morphology and topology. A systematic understanding of the relation of membrane shapes to composition,…
Lipid membranes regulate the flow of materials and information between cells and their organelles. Further, lipid composition and morphology can play a key role in regulating a variety of biological processes. For example, viral uptake,…
Lipid membranes are abundant in living organisms, where they constitute a surrounding shell for cells and their organelles. There are many circumstances in which the deformations of lipid membranes are involved in living cells: fusion and…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
The membrane curvature of cells and intracellular compartments continuously adapts to enable cells to perform vital functions, from cell division to signal trafficking. Understanding how membrane geometry affects these processes in vivo is…
We investigate the morphology of a toroidal fluid membrane vesicle confined inside a spherical container. The equilibrium shapes are assembled in a geometrical phase diagram as a function of scaled area and reduced volume of the membrane.…
Living systems are chiral on multiple scales, from constituent biopolymers to large scale morphology, and their active mechanics is both driven by chiral components and serves to generate chiral morphologies. We describe the mechanics of…
The general Helfrich shape equation determined by minimizing the curvature free energy describes the equilibrium shapes of the axisymmetric lipid bilayer vesicles in different conditions. It is a non-linear differential equation with…
In this paper, phase field models are developed for multi-component vesicle membranes with different lipid compositions and membranes with free boundary. These models are used to simulate the deformation of membranes under the elastic…
Cells are defined by lipid membranes that differ in their structure across the tree of life. While the membranes of most bacteria and eukaryotes consist of single-headed bilayer lipids, the membranes of archaea are composed of mixtures of…
This paper considers membranes of globular structure in the framework of the cell model technique. Coupled micropolar and Brinkman-type equations are used to model the flow of micropolar fluid through a spherical cell, consisting of solid…
Heterogeneities in the cell membrane due to coexisting lipid phases have been conjectured to play a major functional role in cell signaling and membrane trafficking. Thereby the material properties of multiphase systems, such as the line…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
Cellular membranes are a heterogeneous mix of lipids, proteins and small molecules. Special groupings of saturated lipids and cholesterol form a liquid-ordered phase, known as `lipid rafts,' serving as platforms for signaling, trafficking…
Fluid membranes made out of lipid bilayers are the fundamental separation structure in eukaryotic cells. Many physiological processes rely on dramatic shape and topological changes (e.g. fusion, fission) of fluid membrane systems. Fluidity…