Related papers: Can amphiphile architecture directly control vesic…

The elastic property of membranes self-assembled from AB diblock and ABA triblock copolymers, as coarse-grained model of lipids and the bolalipids, are studied using the self-consistent field theory (SCFT). Specifically, solutions of the…

Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…

We carry out numerical simulations of vesicle formation based on the density functional theory for block copolymer solutions. It is shown by solving the time evolution equations for concentrations that a polymer vesicle is spontaneously…

Lipid vesicles consist of aqueous cores surrounded by a bilayer of phospholipids. Hybrid polymer-lipid vesicles incorporate both polymers and lipids, offering promising properties for developing pharmaceuticals, biosensors, and artificial…

Polymers with both soluble and insoluble blocks typically self-assemble into micelles, aggregates of a finite number of polymers where the soluble blocks shield the insoluble ones from contact with the solvent. Upon increasing…

We report a simple route to form robust, inorganic, semi-permeable compartments composed of montmorillonite, a natural plate-like clay mineral that occurs widely in the environment. Mechanical forces due to shear in a narrow gap assemble…

We present a theoretical study for the intermediate stages of the growth of membranes and vesicles in supersaturated solutions of amphiphilic molecules. The problem presents important differences with the growth of droplets in the classical…

Using field theoretic approach, we study equilibrium shape deformation of a vesicle induced by the presence of enclosed flexible polymers, which is a simple model of drug delivery system or endocytosis. To evaluate the total free energy of…

The need for organisms to regulate their volume and osmolarity when surrounded by freshwater is a basic physical challenge for many bacteria, protists and algae. Taking inspiration from the contractile vacuole complex found in many…

We study the phase behavior of multicomponent lipid bilayer vesicles that can exhibit intriguing morphological patterns and lateral phase separation. We use a modified Landau-Ginzburg model capable of describing spatially uniform phases,…

Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…

Lipid membranes, the barrier defining living cells and many of their sub-compartments, bind to a wide variety of nano- and micro-meter sized objects. In the presence of strong adhesive forces, membranes can strongly deform and wrap the…

A theoretical study of vesicles of topological genus zero is presented. The bilayer membranes forming the vesicles have various degrees of intrinsic (tangent-plane) orientational order, ranging from smectic to hexatic, frustrated by…

Artificial bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs), along with patch-clamped membranes, are frequently used for functional analyses of membrane proteins. In both methods, the electric properties of membranes are characterized by only one parameter,…

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,…

Biological cells use droplets to separate components and spatially control their interior. Experiments demonstrate that the complex, crowded cellular environment affects the droplet arrangement and their sizes. To understand this behavior,…

Biomembranes, primarily composed of lipid bilayers, are not merely passive barriers but dynamic and complex materials whose shapes are governed by the principles of soft matter physics. This review explores the shape problem in biomembranes…

The fluid phase diagram of trimer particles composed of one central attractive bead and two repulsive beads was determined as a function of simple geometric parameters using flat-histogram Monte Carlo methods. A variety of self-assembled…

Cholesterol is known to modulate the structure and function of biological membranes. In this study, we use self-consistent field theory (SCFT) to investigate phospholipid/cholesterol bilayer membranes modeled with two types of diblock…

We present a novel buckling instability relevant to membrane budding in eukaryotic cells. In this mechanism, curved filaments bind to a lipid bilayer without changing its intrinsic curvature. As more and more filaments adsorb, newly added…